TileStack is two things:

1) It is a web-based environment for creating interactive content. It is designed in such a way that it is useful and to the average computer user. The interactive content can be anything from a game to a slide show, to a database.

2) It is a collection of interactive content that can be viewed, modified, and embedded on a personal blog, website, or profile page.

TileStack runs on the web. This makes the computer platform irrelevant. The only requirement to run TileStack is a modern web browser. We have confirmed that TileStack works on Safari 3, Firefox 2 and 3, Opera 9, and Internet Explorer 7. So whether you're on a Mac or a PC, Windows or Linux, computer or mobile phone, TileStack should work.

TileStack.com is an advertiser supported site, and is therefore free for all use.

Although some have jokingly suggested we're like a bunch of mad scientists bringing back HyperCard with a jolt of electricity, we promise there are a number of great reasons for doing this... besides that fact that almost everyone who used HyperCard, loved it :-)

In it's day, HyperCard was the most approachable way for people from all backgrounds to quickly create neat things and it's never really been matched.

The HyperTalk language that HyperCard uses is by far the most English like to be widely used. It enabled tens of thousands of people who had no programming experience to write logic without knowing that's what they were doing.

HyperCard made it feasible for anyone to create applications that showcase their varied ideas and tastes. Keep in mind that your idea of a neat thing may only be neat to you and your friends, or to a group of people in your field. Before HyperCard it was too prohibitive to create niche applications catered to your liking.

And ever since HyperCard was sunset, no one has stepped up to the plate to create a true equivalent. With TileStack, we are working toward filling that void and bringing back the power for anyone to build anything. Web 2.0 style!

Interesting you ask. We first appeared on the scene at MacWorld 2008 to get some feedback from people about what we were working on.

We also made the typical "It'll be out in a couple months" promise... which of course didn't happen, but not from lack of trying. We just realized after the show that we needed to rebuild certain things in order to provide a better user experience... and we should have known better, because in software, the simpler something seems, the more difficult it usually is to build... and HyperCard seemed fairly user-friendly and simple :-)

Awesome. We'd love to hear directly from anyone interested in talking with us about the mad hacking we're doing here. You can contact our CEO Joshua Gertzen via one of the following:

email: josh at tilestack dot com
phone: +1 972.636.5115
mobile: +1 214.212.3618
fax: +1 972.516.8914
twitter: gertzen

We're glad you like it... we think it's a great idea as well and has the potential to reshape user-created content. As for investing, we're actually backed by a couple private investors who have helped us get this far and we are financially sound for the foreseeable future. With that said, we always like to hear from people who are interested in what we are doing. If your one of those people, please contact our CEO Joshua Gertzen:

email: josh at tilestack dot com
phone: +1 972.636.5115
mobile: +1 214.212.3618
fax: +1 972.516.8914
twitter: gertzen

Speak is the name of the language that all TileStack's use to describe what should happen when someone interacts with a stack you've created. It is directly related to the HyperTalk language that was used by HyperCard for the same purpose.

Similar to HyperTalk, Speak allows you to describe things in a language that is very close to natural English. This allows people to pickup and understand Speak very quickly because everything is written in plain English phrases.

At this point we haven't expanded or added much to the language beyond what HyperTalk offered, so most of the references that exist about HyperTalk should provide a good idea of how to work with Speak.

So close it might surprise you. Here are some examples:

set the name of card field 1 to "My Field"

go to the next tile

get the first word in field "First Name"

if there is a tile field "My Field" then put "Hello" into tile field "My Field"

if the color of me is "blue" then set the color of me to "green"

hide button 1 of the next tile

Additionally, the language supports aliases and variations for a number of words and phrases. Consider the various ways you can go to the previous tile:

go to the previous tile
go to previous tile
go to prev tile
go previous tile

Because we're not building this for programmers. TileStack is for non-programmers and it's much easier for most people to read a natural language like Speak then it is for them to read a bunch of syntax. Now we also think that programmers will find TileStack incredibly useful as well because it lets you quickly prototype things and get stuff done fast.

Further, the Speak language runs within the web browser, not on the server. Yes, you read that correctly, Speak code runs in the browser... just like JavaScript. And while client-side JavaScript can be wicked cool, it can also be a royal pain in the butt to pull off what should be really simple things.

Thats just a couple reasons why Speak owns.

Warning: Geek Speak Ok... so your probably a geek if your reading this. But technically, we don't run Speak within the browser because you can't get away with that without a browser plugin of some sort. Instead, we actually translate the Speak language on the server to pure JavaScript. [geekasm]

Since we translate the Speak phrases you write directly to JavaScript, this means that once you load a stack into your browser, it runs entirely disconnected from the server and only communicates with the server to update it with any state changes. This also means that our stacks run on the iPhone because there is no client-side dependency besides JavaScript.[double geekasm]

Tiles are the canvases that you add fields or buttons to. You can also set a picture that is shown behind fields and buttons. Each stack can have many tiles and often times the tiles are connected to each other directly through buttons on the stacks. However some stacks behave more like slideshow presentations, in which case you simply use the built in navigation buttons at the bottom of a stack to flip between the tiles.

Simply put, it's a collection of multiple tiles and backgrounds. You can also think of it as a mini web application, widget or gadget.

Backgrounds behave pretty much exactly like Tiles. You can add fields and buttons to them and you can have multiple backgrounds in a stack. The difference is that a background can be shared between multiple tiles, thus allowing common fields and buttons to appear on more than one tile. To setup a tile to use an existing background, simply go to a tile that already uses the background you want to use, and then click the "+" button to add a new tile. That's it... the new tile will share the background from the other tile.

Buttons can be thought of as a way to add interactions to a stack. A simple case might be a button that performs a simple task, such as navigating to a different tile or computing a value from two field values.

A frequent use of buttons is to set their style to transparent and then place them on top of a background or tile picture. These relatively simple steps can be repeated multiple times to create an interactive picture.

Fields can be thought of as containers that store pieces of information. Typically you add a field to a background rather than a tile so that the field appears on all tiles that use the background. The information stored in a background field is unique to each tile by default. This makes it easy to setup a simple system for organizing information since you only need to add a set of fields once to a background and then you can just add a new tile every time you have a new 'record' of information to store. For instance, in the case of a stack used to store recipes you might have just one background with all the recipe fields, but you'd have one tile for each recipe that contains the actual information for the recipe.

Essentially TileStack can be thought of as an online playground where people of all ages are free to create neat things that we call 'stacks'. Adapting concepts from the incredibly popular classic HyperCard system from Apple, a stack consists of one or more 'tiles' that take a person who uses the stack down a path leading from one tile to the next. In a simple case, each tile can contain a different picture and text, in effect creating a simple online and shareable slideshow.

You can also add buttons to any tile that respond to something a user does. For example, clicking on a doorway in a picture could display the message "Welcome to My Home" and then go to the next tile in the stack that shows a picture of the inside of the home.

You can add input fields to tiles to create a custom system for storing information. Have a collection of recipes? Would you like to organize your movie collection? Just create a stack that fits what you needs. And of course, after you create something neat, you can publish your creation on TileStack.com for others to use and learn from.

Likewise you can explore the published stacks that others have made. Making it easy to learn new things and pick up cool ideas. And finally, if you happen to have some of classic HyperCard stacks laying around, you can upload them to TileStack.com and use them once again!

Yes. Just click the "Embed/Export" button on any published stack's page and you'll see this:

Anyone can embed any published stack on their blog or web page, download as a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget, or add it to iGoogle as a gadget. If you are the creator of the stack, you also have the option to publish it as a Facebook application.

We are working hard to expand this list, so keep checking back for more options.

Absolutely. Gather them up and load them on here... your stacks can have a new life! Then if you want, you can publish your stacks so others can learn from them and use what you've created. We are striving for near 100% compatibility with HyperCard 2.2. We're not there just yet, so if you experience any issues, let us know in the forums.

Once you have a user account, you can can click the "Upload Existing Stack" button that is located at the bottom-right of the "My Personal Stacks" section. The only requirement is that the stacks you upload must be in MacBinary format. You can use some versions of StuffIt to create a MacBinary file, or you can download this free converter for Mac OS X.

Compressed or stuffed stacks are not supported yet. We are working a way to import stacks compressed with StuffIt, but that's not in place just yet.

Finally, we do recommend that you first compact your stacks if you have a way to do that. We have done a lot of work to read uncompacted stacks properly and generally we can read them just fine. But there are still some occasional glitches we've seen with uncompacted stacks.

Actually, yes :-) If you have some old HyperCard stacks lying around on floppy disks that you can't read because you either don't have a computer with a floppy drive, then we'll gladly do our best to import them on our vintage hardware here in CodeFlare labs. Keep in mind that older floppies can sometimes be troublesome to read due to their age or how much banging around they've had, so we may not be able to recover them.

If you'd like us to try and recover your stacks and then assign them to your account as personal stacks, just send your floppies in appropriate packaging to:

CodeFlare
5919 Greenville #335
Dallas, TX 75206-1906

NOTE: Please include your user account email address plus return packaging and postage if you would like us to return your floppies

Probably the biggest limitation is that we don't have any support for external commands (XCMD's). If you are familiar with what these are then you can understand that it's just not feasible. However, if there was a great XCMD that you used to use and that your existing stack depends on, then please let us know in the "Old School" forum. If it makes sense, we may add it if at all possible.

Additionally, we are still missing some commands, functions and properties. Some of these are missing on purpose, but others are not yet implemented. In either case, please help us fill the missing gaps by letting us know what's missing in the "Questions" area. Thanks.

We aren't perfect yet. However, we are striving for 100% compatibility with HyperTalk. We probably won't be able to technically support every command, function or property that HyperTalk had available to it, but from the language perspective we are at least 95% compatibility currently. Most of the problems you are likely to encounter are going to be with unsupported or missing commands, functions, properties.

If you find a problem please report it in the "Questions" area. Thanks.