Beginner's Guide

Build your first HyperXTalk app

No prior programming experience needed. In the next five minutes you'll create a working desktop application — a simple greeting card that asks your name and says hello. Let's go! 🎉

⏱ About 5 minutes

Download & Install HyperXTalk

Head over to the releases page and download the latest version for your platform. Open the downloaded file and follow the installation steps.

💡 Windows users: If you see a Windows SmartScreen dialog saying "Windows protected your PC", click More info and then Run anyway. HyperXTalk is code-signed — SmartScreen may appear for new apps until they build up enough reputation with Microsoft.

Once installed, open HyperXTalk. You'll be greeted by the splash screen and then the IDE.

Create a New Stack

In HyperXTalk, every app lives in a stack — think of it as your project file. To create one:

Go to File → New Stack
A blank window will appear — that's your first card!
Save it somewhere you'll remember: File → Save and give it the name Hello.hyperxtalk

📖 A stack contains one or more cards. Cards are like pages — your app can have as many as you need. For now, we just need one.

Add a Field

A field is where text lives — for input or output. We'll add one for our greeting message.

Make sure you're in Edit mode — click the Edit tool (the arrow) in the Tools palette on the left
Go to Object → New Field
A field will appear on your card — drag it to roughly the centre and resize it to a comfortable size
Double-click the field to open the Property Inspector and give it the name Greeting

💡 Naming your controls makes it easy to refer to them in scripts. Always give fields and buttons meaningful names!

Add a Button

Now let's add a button to trigger our greeting.

Go to Object → New Button
A button will appear — drag it below your field
Double-click it to open the Property Inspector
Set its name to Greet
Set its label (the text it displays) to Say Hello!

Your card should now have a field near the top and a button below it. It's starting to look like an app! 🎉

Write Your First Script

Here's where the magic happens. Right-click your Say Hello! button and choose Edit Script. The Script Editor will open.

Type the following — or copy and paste it:

button "Greet"
on mouseUp
   -- Ask the user for their name
   ask "What is your name?"

   -- 'it' holds whatever the user typed
   if it is not empty then
      set the text of field "Greeting" to "Hello, " & it & "! Welcome to HyperXTalk 🎉"
   end if
end mouseUp

Click Apply to save the script. Let's walk through what it does:

on mouseUp — this runs when the button is clicked and released
ask "What is your name?" — shows a dialog asking for input; the answer is stored in a special variable called it
if it is not empty — only proceeds if the user actually typed something
set the text of field "Greeting" to ... — puts our greeting into the field
end mouseUp — closes the handler

📖 Notice how the script reads almost like plain English? That's HyperXTalk's superpower. & is used to join pieces of text together — it's called concatenation.

Run It!

Switch to Browse mode by clicking the hand tool in the Tools palette (or pressing Cmd+9 on macOS / Ctrl+9 on Windows and Linux).

Now click your Say Hello! button. A dialog will appear asking for your name — type it in and click OK.

Your greeting should appear in the field. 🎉

🚀 Want to share your app? Go to File → Standalone Application Settings to build a version your friends can run — no HyperXTalk installation required!