CSC 101 CompLit, Fall 1996
Merrie Bergmann
Ileana Streinu
Dominique Thiébaut
In this lab (and extending to the homework), we will begin learning HyperCard. In addition, at the end of the lab you'll do a little search on the net and send us email with the results.
1. Using Find. Your first task is to locate the HyperCard application on the hard disk. Select the local hard disk (click on it once). Then from the File menu, select Find. Type in HyperCard 2.3. After some time, you will get a window telling you the folder where the application HyperCard 2.3 is located. Open this folder.
2. Make Alias. The next task is to create an alias so that you will not have to do this every time you will need to launch HyperCard today. Select HyperCard in the folder HyperCard 2.3 (single click on it - do not double click!), then from the File menu do Make Alias. Drag the alias on the desktop, if not already there. (You may need to insert a floppy to be allowed to do this).
3. HyperCard Tour. Launch HyperCard by double clicking on its alias icon. You will see a card with several buttons on it. Click on HyperCard tour and go over the tour at your own pace. However, do not spend more than one hour with it.
4. Bill's Diner. Login to the Seelye server, open Seelye Courseware, open Literacy, open Text Stacks, open ÆStacks. These are HyperCard stacks that you can explore for inspiration and ideas. Open Bill's Diner stack. Verify that you are running HyperCard version 2.3, by choosing About HyperCard in the Apple menu.
4.1. Read the help message (shown by clicking on the ? button) on the first card, and then browse through (in any order you want) the remaining cards of the stack.
4.2. In case I do not get to make my lecture notes on HyperCard available to you before the lab, here is a short description of the features you will need most frequently: The Go menu allows you to navigate (browse) the stack: to the first, next, previous and last card of a stack; to the home card of HyperCard; Recent shows you the last 30 or so cards that you have visited: clicking on one takes you directly there.
4.3. Quit HyperCard when you become familiar with the stack: you will get back to it later and modify it.
5. Copy stacks. For the previous exercise, you were examining a file on the server, but you could not modify it. For the remaining exercises (and throughout the semester), we will put the files we need your diskette, and work from there instead. HyperCard 2.3 is actually on the local hard drive of every Mac in Seelye 411, so we can work independent of the server. (Unfortunately, only the old version of HyperCard is available in the other labs.)
5.1. Copy the following three files from the ÆStacks folder on the server to your diskette (any one of the partners' diskettes will suffice): ÆHome, Bill's Diner, and ÆWorkbook. You do this by dragging their icons to your diskette icon. Please close all the Seelye server windows, but leave the server icon on your desktop.
5.2. Now open your diskette icon, and double-click on the ÆHome stack. This will launch HyperCard and open that stack. We are now ready for the remaining part of the lab. At the end you will deposit a stack into the DropBox.
6. Adding cards to stacks. Open the Æ Workbook stack. Choose Go/Message, type "set userlevel to 5", and hit return. (Note that "userlevel" is one word.) This has the effect of setting your privileges to the highest level. I prefer setting it to the max. rather than inching up levels. However as you work at this high level, you may accidentally destroy information on your stack: remember that you can always go back to the server and get yourself a new copy! Also, you can save intermediate versions of your work by duplicating it at any time: to do this, choose File/Duplicate.
6.1. Click on the About Fields button near the top of the Æ Workbook. Then choose Card Info from the Objects menu and review the description properties of this card. (There are some minor changes from the version of HyperCard described by the Workbook to the 2.3 version that we are using.)
6.2. Choose Background Info from the Objects menu and review the descriptive properties of this card's background.
6.3. Choose Background from the Edit menu to view just the current background. Choose Edit/Background again to view the entire card. You can tell whether or not you are viewing the background by the change in the menu bar.
6.4. Open the Bill's Diner stack (either from File/Open or double clicking on it). Use the Stack Info command from the Objects menu: write down the number of cards you have in the stack.
6.5. Add a new card to Bill's Diner to follow the card for "Tony's". Leave the card blank for now. Verify that the new card you added lies between Tony's and Vincente's. If it does not, cut out the card you added and try again.
The point of these exercises is to learn how to interrogate properties of stacks, to see the difference between foreground (card) and background (common to all cards) [one of the more confusing aspects of HyperCard], and also to add a card with new information to a stack.
7. Changing properties. The next exercise asks you to investigate fields, and add some to the Bill's Diner stack. Please read the whole description before embarking on this exercise:
7.1. Open The Æ Workbook stack.
7.2. Use the practice cards at the beginning of the workbook to experiment with creating and setting the properties of fields. The Workbook menu provides commands for clearing the current card and for creating additional cards for practice.
7.3. Open your copy of Bill's Diner in a new window (you get this choice in dialog box that comes up when you select File/Open). Go to the new restaurant card that you created in step 6.5. and select the Field tool to see what fields are on the card and on its background. (The Field tool is the topmost, rightmost one from the Tools menu).
7.4. Now I would like you to make up a restaurant name and a description, and enter this information into the existing fields of your new card. READ FURTHER: Do NOT use the graphics tools (labeled A) to add text! You should use the browse tool (the hand). You will find yourself unable to carry out this step because the relevant fields have "Lock Text" selected, so you will need to get into the Field Info dialog box of each and unlock the text, then back into the browse tool to enter text into the field. (It's OK to leave the fields unlocked.) The cursor will change from a hand to a vertical bar when you point to an unlocked text field.
7.5. Return to the first card of the Diner stack. Set the font and style of the restaurant name to something distinctive for all cards of the stack. Careful: I mean for you to set the textstyle property of the background field corresponding to the restaurant name to something distinctive, which will have the effect of altering every restaurant name to have the same distinctive font. You should NOT use Font on the menu bar, which will alter it just on one card.
7.6. Add a field to every card of the stack to hold the restaurant's phone number. This part is a bit tricky, so careful: I hope you realize that you only need add one field to the background, and it has the effect of being visible on every card. Feel free to move or resize any of the existing fields to accommodate your new one. Enter (different) fictitious phone numbers into this field on every card.
8. Wrap up. You are now finished the HyperCard part of the lab. Quit HyperCard (File/Quit). Rename your Bill's Diner stack L3.Name1.Name2 where Name1/2 are your respective last names (with an added initial if not unique). Please try to type exactly as I have it: no embedded spaces, uppercase L, capitalize your last names. (Sorry to be fussy, but this will help in our lab management, because the files are sorted alphabetically.) You do this by clicking on the name under the icon (it becomes boxed and changes color) and editing it. Drag your file from your diskette to Seelye Courseware/Literacy/DropBox.
9. Net search. This (short) part of the lab asks you to perform two searches on the net.
9.1. Launch Netscape (in Internet tools on the server). Just above the main window of the Netscape screen is a row of buttons (if not, choose Options/Show directory buttons); click on the one called "Net Search". When the new screen is finished loading, click on "InfoSeek" and wait for it to finish loading. There is a long narrow box. labeled "type a question or topic here" Type in HyperCard 2.3 and start a search (click "seek now"). This should bring up a page of information. Write down any piece of information (not in the advertisements, please, as these change!) from this page that will demonstrate to us that you've reached here successfully. You'll email this in a minute.
9.2. Back up to the Internet Search page (either using the "Back" button or the Go menu). Scroll to the "Who Where" search. Find someone (anyone, be imaginative!) using this search facility. (If you can't find someone, you can look for me: Ileana Streinu). Write down the name of the person on whom the search was successful.
10. Email. Lastly, telnet to Sophia, use your cs101axx account, and in pine send an email to cs101a00 with the two items you found with Net Search. Please be sure to sign the email with all partners' names!