HyperSense was originally inspired by Apple's HyperCard, which offered for the first time an easy-to-use tool that enabled non-programmers to construct content-rich interactive documents and applications. This empowerment of individuals is what we have tried to enlarge upon with HyperSense, as embodied in the product's tagline: "free your imagination".

While HyperCard pioneered the concept of a multimedia hypertext document as a "stack of cards" supported by the power of an understandable English-like scripting language, the implementation was found to be restrictive and limiting in many ways. One of our primary goals with the original version of HyperSense was to do away with these limitations, building upon the strengths of the HyperCard model while offering users significantly greater flexibility in structuring documents to achieve their desired results.

In moving HyperSense to MacOS X, we are taking advantage of the transition to make some fundamental changes in the program's underlying structure in order to fully leverage the power of the MacOS X environment and make that power available to HyperSense users. In the process, we are also rededicating our efforts to focus on ease of use and understanding.

The power of MacOS X is already available to anyone -- anyone who can program in Objective C or Java, that is, and who takes the time to learn the intricacies of the extensive and complex programming interfaces! HyperSense's mission is to make that power available and usable by people at a much higher level, to enable them to express their ideas in the form of rich interactive documents and multimedia applications.

Our design philosophy, then, is focused on providing tools that are easy to use and understand, so that anyone can master the basics in a short time. These tools are powered by understandable scripts written in the English-like SenseTalk language, and supported by a deep object-oriented core framework. Furthermore, the entire system -- from the user interface and tool palettes all the way to the deepest programming levels -- is designed to be extensible and customizable by users in order to adapt and integrate the system to meet their specific needs.