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Welcome to our SuperCard Intro FAQ. Most of these questions are geared toward introducing SuperCard to those who may not be completely familiar with the package. Some questions deal with HyperCard users who may be interested in "upgrading" to SuperCard.

General Questions: Q: What is SuperCard? Q: Who is Solutions Etcetera? I thought SuperCard was being developed by IncWell? Q: There are many news items on SuperCard Resource that do not appear to relate to SuperCard. What exactly do they have to do with SuperCard? HyperCard to SuperCard: Q: I use HyperCard and have and interest in SuperCard. How does SuperCard compare to HyperCard? Q: Is SuperCard as easy to use as HyperCard? Q: Is SuperTalk similar to HyperTalk?

Q: What is SuperCard?
A: SuperCard is a very difficult program to classify. It is actually a combination of a multimedia, authoring, programing, and a database program. SuperCard uses a card-window metaphor which is very similar to HyperCard's card-stack metaphor.

Q: Who is Solutions Etcetera? I thought SuperCard was being developed by IncWell?
A: SuperCard has had a very rocky history. Back in the late 80's, many people were unsatisfied by HyperCard. Some people/companies tried to fix HyperCard's shortcomings by writing XCMDs and XCFNs to add requested features to the program (such as color). However, a company known as Silicon Beach Software decided that the best way to fix HyperCard's problems was to develop their own program which would give users color support and other features. This product became know as SuperCard.

Eventually, Aldus bought Silicon Beach Software. SuperCard was then a product of Aldus until it was sold to Allegiant Technologies, a company which was started by former SuperCard engineers to buy SuperCard form Aldus before they were acquired by Adobe.

Allegiant continued to update SuperCard for a few years. However, Allegiant suffered from financial problems which forced them to look for someone to buy their product line. This occurred a few months after SuperCard 3.0 was released.

IncWell was the company that eventually bought SuperCard. They upgraded SuperCard to 3.5 and later to 3.6 (other small updates have also been released).

Solutions Etcetera has now fully acquired SuperCard from IncWell. Their first task was to release SuperCard 4.0. This version is fully Mac OS X native.

Q: There are many news items on SuperCard Resource that do not appear to relate to SuperCard. What exactly do they have to do with SuperCard?
A: Many of these news items relate to programs or projects that have been written in SuperCard, such as news items relating to products of YENCO.COM and LittleFish Software.

Q: I use HyperCard and have and interest in SuperCard. How does SuperCard compare to HyperCard?
A: Although once similar products, these two programs have much differences. SuperCard is much more powerful than HyperCard 2.4.1. However, both programs have a similar card metaphor. For this reason, they can be considered similar. SuperCard can do essentially that HyperCard can do and much more. And as of SuperCard 4, anything written in SuperCard can be run natively in Mac OS X, as well as Mac OS 9.

Q: Is SuperCard as easy to use as HyperCard?
A: Since SuperCard is much more powerful, it is slightly more difficult to use in some respects. However, the SuperCard development environments, SuperEdit and the Runtime Editor, as easy to use with a little practice. Some things, such as the creation of custom menus, are much easier to make in SuperCard.

Q: Is SuperTalk similar to HyperTalk?
A: Both scripting languages are very similar. The former website of Allegiant said that if you knew HyperTalk, then you already knew 90% of SuperTalk. (Allegiant was a former developer of SuperCard.)

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