Introduction

Probably you know it: you are designing a website and think: "Mh, nice - but somehow there are some things missing. A guestbook, forum etc...". But you do not want to insert third party elements that contain commercials - or you do not want to use blow-up apps like Microsoft FrontPage or NetObjects Fusion, cos you do not know what they do with your code.
The only solution you have is to create your own "web apps" using CGI (common gateway interface) - if the webspace provider allows this, of course...

Basically, you can write such apps in any language, but there are two probs: a) most providers do not support e.g. Windows executables on the webserver and b) Perl / PerlScript is the best language to use for string formatting. Why strings? This is explained below...

Imagine you have a survey form on your webpage - you have two ways of making it work: via HTML command you may pass the data to an email application (which is not that elegantly, and works only with such configured clients) or you may use CGI to process the data and to add final gimmicks.
Using CGI, when the user clicks on "Send", the webbrowser flushes the contents of the form to a CGI application running on the webserver. It processes the data (e.g. saves it into a file / database or sends it via sendmail to the admin) and creates a result page. This may be a confirmation that given data has been sucessfully accepted. Having another example at hand, imagine a CD online shop. It would have a database on the webserver. The user enters data on album title or interprete or maybe on pricing. The CGI app gets the query, retrieves data from the base regarding user specifications and collects all items of interest. Then, having the required data, it generates a HTML page with all nessessary contents.
As you can see, such examples require more than HTML combined with JavaScript - that's why you may use Perl.

Programming Perl is not that easy - under Linux, Perl is an integrated part of the system, but there are few dedicated IDEs for Perl. One of the most famous ones is Emacs (also available for Win9x and NT), but Emacs is open purpose - thus it is not optimized for Perl, which makes working with it harder as a newbee. Using the Microsoft Windows family, Perl has to be installed seperately (but it is free, btw.). For programming, you have to use simple editors like Notepad or the complicated Emacs (unstable beta at the moment for Win).
What you have then is a leak of cooperation: the editor is just for typing - there is no interface for debuggin, running, syntax checking or HTML. You always have many windows open, e.g. the editor, a commandline-interface (cmd under Windows2000 or NT or the DOS prompt) for starting Perl, and / or a webbrowser for running the script in its environment. At this point, CamelRider is an option.

CamelRider combines all these options into one integrated development environment (short: IDE). It contains an editor that allows to open several source code files at one time and eases reading code / programming by syntax highlighting (colouring the code). When having Perl installed, a simple button click runs the script for execution, syntax check or for debugging. The output of the Perl interpreter then is displayed in a dedicated windows in CamelRider.
But that is not all: cos PerlScripts are most common used in combination with HTML forms, the IDE provides an integrated webbrowser containing that form. Thus you may simply switch between your source code and the HTML document for testing it. To ease navigation in your source, there is a code inspector that lists all variables and subroutines. By clicking onto a definition, the cursor jumps to the first occurence of that item.
For often reused code samples, Neveprise CamelRider provides a code template palette containing standard and user defined code samples - by clicking onto one, the code is inserted into the active script.

• multi-document support

• code highlighing

• reusable code templates

• code inspector

• integrated Perl interface for running, syntax check & debugging

• integrated command console (cmd or command.com)

• Explorer for quick file access

• built-in webbrowser for script-associated HTML pages

• task scheduler

Before this help describes these features in detail and how to work with'em, the next section will introduce you on Perl and webservers, the two apps you additionally need to work properly with Neveprise CamelRider. Click on the arrow bottom-right to continue.