CompuServe Thread

On the eighth point, since the cost of becoming an Ultracard "user" is jus the cost of downloading the browser, the normal chicken-and-egg paradox is neatly elminated. A stack author is in the same position as an artist, who konws that whether the art tool is DPaint, PPaint, ExpressPaint, or DigiPaint, or whatever, the resulting image can be legitimately viewed by any IFF display utility. This is not the case with Thinker or InfoMinder, two other hyperdocument editors which require both the author and end-user to make an $80+ purchase.

Ron, I "played" with hypercard for about 30 minutes over a year ago. This is my entire exposure to a program that appears to have generated almost one hundred "How to program HyperCard" type books, hundreds (if not thousands of PD stacks) and more hype than anything else (maybe they should have called it HypeCard, without the 'r'. Without proper documentation it is very diificult to know much about UltraCard. You only have the browser and the two sample stacks to go by. As often happens software companies never seem to include supplemental (in this case stacks) that do very much. They seem to leave that to the general public, which is a very poor public relations move. The two demo stacks left a lot to be desired. UltraDex should be called MiniDex. It is an example of what can be done with a minimum amount of time available, the calendar was not written well enough to display the month of July correctly. No evidence of "hypertext" was shown, and while tinkering with it I crashed my Amiga twice. I really don't know what to make of it. I hope that the first two stacks were just badly done, and that promised future stacks will show UltraCards true powers. The browser is over 200K large (HyperCard is known to be very memory hungry too) and seems slow to me, although perhaps it was because the stacks were floppy based instead of hard drive based. <continued>

<continuation> In short, as you stated, all I see is a simple, perhaps more user friendly database program. I would assume that you could "whip up" similar applications with SuperBase (for a higher cost, and with more work). I'd like to see if UltraCard runs in hi-res, or on the workbench screen, whether it has hypertext capability, and better graphics than demonstrated in the stacks (if you tried to change the buttons fron rectangle to ovals you would notice that the shadows remained rectangular. I now have more questions about UltraCard than I did before the demo release. As far as stack compatibility, there is none. Someday someone may come out with a translator, but presently they are totally incompatible products. I look forward to seeing future stacks, perhaps from Tom or other people who will be getting their full version program this week. I want to see what this program can REALLY do! -RSL-

Please report what type of crashes (if any) you are having. The browser will continue to get smaller. The stacks we have posted are just the beginning. I expect that we will post at least 2 to 3 stacks per week in the coming weeks so that you all can see what the program is really good for. After all, just like a compiler, this product is simply an applications generator engine. In reply to the resolution question! We support (in 1.01a) 320×200 320×400 640×200 640×400. In the next release we will support: User defined Width and Height Overscan etc. Please send me (preferably via EasyPlex) your suggestions. Mike Lehman Intuitive Technologies. p.s. We are publishing this product ourselves to give users the maximum support (i.e. direct contact with ME). Please use this support pathway to make suggestions and bug reports. We want UltraCard to succeed and this browser uploaded to CIS is just the beginning. p.p.s If you are involved with a user group please send me a UPS address and I will ship the latest browser and stacks to your group for distribution.