Product Reviews

Runtime Revolution's Dreamcard is a software creation tool that lets you make your own software and run it on almost any modern desktop operating system. That's a simple statement, but what it means is quite extraordinary. The development tools and scripting language have their roots in the venerable HyperCard, which ensures that it is as accessible for regular humans with an adventurous bent as it is useful for high-powered programmers looking for swift prototyping and production options.

Dreamcard is directly related to the company's high-powered software creation tool, Revolution. A Dreamcard 'stack' is a series of cards presented in a window. Interface elements, from buttons and text fields to graphics, movie objects (linked to QuickTime movies), image areas (for bitmapped graphics) and more are added by drag-and-drop from the Dreamcard tools palette. A multi-purpose Inspector palette provides control over a range of settings for any selected object, the current card, or the whole stack itself. Multiple windows are provided by linking stacks as substacks.

The software doesn't offer all interface elements possible in the Mac OS, but this is mainly due to the restrictions of developing for cross-platform use, something which it actually handles very well. Creating menus in Dreamcard is a case in point. While it is a little easier than in the first versions of Revolution, there are still some oddities.

Because

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menus are presented in very different ways on Windows, Linux and Unix platforms than on the Mac OS, they have to be handled in a particularly flexible way within your stacks. They are, in effect, buttons when shown within the bounds of a window (non-Mac OS style) and menus in the familiar menu bar when set to behave in the Macintosh-standard manner. This behaviour can be switched at will, and the Menu Builder window provides a simple method for setting this during development. If you want to take cross-platform development seriously, however, you'll get to grips with managing this entirely by script.

It is scripting that makes the Dreamcard stacks come to life. Just as with the Mac-specific equivalent SuperCard, the language is closely based on English sentence structure rather than raw programming codes, which makes it easy to pick up even if you have no programming background.

Dreamcard is essentially a rebranded version of the company's high-powered application creation tool, Revolution. The most important difference is the inability to make standalone applications from your Dreamcard stacks. Instead, a Dreamcard Player utility is provided, and a copy of this can be supplied with your stacks for use on the Mac, Windows, and a wide variety of Unix and Linux variations. Of course, this is quite reasonable when comparing Dreamcard's price of £69 with Revolution Studio's £199 and Revolution Enterprise's £599. Other differences include the inability to communicate online using SSL (secure sockets layer) for e-commerce applications, access to Oracle databases, and the use of your Dreamcard license on a single computer platform rather than being able to edit and debug your work on different platforms.

Dreamcard's low price and cross-platform production abilities are a marvel. It isn't as finely-tuned for Mac-specific production as we'd like, but being able to build something functional, polished, and impressive on your Mac and hand it over to Windows-using colleagues certainly makes up for a lot.