# HyperCard basics ## Introduction to HyperCard {#introduction} HyperCard® is a Macintosh® software environment. You use it to create your own ways of doing things on your computer. If you're new to HyperCard, go through the HyperCard Tour stack to find out how HyperCard works. You can also use the tutorials in the HyperCard Reference Manual for some beginning practice. If you're interested in HyperTalk, the language you use to write scripts, choose HyperTalk Reference from the Reference menu. ## What you need to use HyperCard To use HyperCard, you need the following hardware and software: * An Apple® Macintosh or PowerBook computer with at least two megabytes (MB) of memory; 4 MB of RAM required for System 7 or later; 8 MB of RAM required for Power Macintosh computers * System software version 6.0.5 or later. (For Apple Open Scripting Architecture, you'll need System Software version 7.0 or later.) * The appropriate printer driver for your printer—it must be the version that comes with system software version 6.0.5 or later. Click Tips for more information about checking your system’s memory and version and giving HyperCard more memory. ## Saving in HyperCard HyperCard automatically (without asking) saves any changes you make to stacks as you work. The File menu does not have a Save command. While automatic saving can be convenient, it often makes sense to save a copy of a stack before you begin to make changes to it. That way, if you change the stack (intentionally or otherwise), you can always go back to the original version. Click Related Topics for information about saving a copy of a stack. ## Click buttons once In most stacks, you look at information by clicking buttons. Buttons are active areas (or “hot spots”) on the screen. But you only need to click **once**. One click is enough to make a HyperCard button work—don’t double-click it. When you double-click a HyperCard button, sometimes HyperCard saves the second click until another card appears. Then you might find you’ve accidentally clicked a button you didn’t mean to click. ## The Home stack The Home stack serves as a home base whenever you use HyperCard, and it’s a good place to start exploring. It includes a visual directory of other HyperCard stacks and provides easy access to them. As you explore other stacks, you can return to the Home stack at any time by choosing Home from the Go menu (or pressing -H). The Home stack contains important information that HyperCard needs to run: * The first five cards in the Home stack, called the Home cards, are designed to hold buttons that take you to stacks. * The Preferences card lets you set your user level and other options. * Three Search Paths cards tell HyperCard where on your disks to look for stacks, applications, and documents that you use frequently. For the most part, you don’t have to worry about the contents of the Search Paths cards. Note: HyperCard looks for a Home stack each time it starts. If it can’t find a Home stack, HyperCard presents the directory dialog box and asks you to locate it. If you don’t have a stack named “Home,” you can designate any stack to act as the Home stack for that HyperCard session. (To do so, double-click the stack you want to use in the directory dialog box.) For your convenience, it's best not to delete the Home stack. Click Related Topics for more information about setting your user level and adding buttons to your Home cards. ## Cards, stacks, and windows In HyperCard, information appears on cards. Cards can contain both text and graphics. One or more cards are grouped together into stacks. A stack is a HyperCard document. As with other Macintosh documents, when you open a HyperCard stack, it appears in a window. Remember these points: * All cards in a given stack have the same size. * You can change the card size. * A window displays one card of a stack at a time. * A stack can appear in one window only—you can’t have two windows displaying the same stack. * HyperCard windows are the same size as the cards they display, or smaller; a window can never be larger than the card size. * HyperCard windows do not have scroll bars or a size box, but you can resize a window to make it smaller than the card size. Click Related Topics for information about resizing windows and resizing a stack’s cards. [test link](#introduction)