How visual perl can be?

NAstyed has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Just before i started to learn perl, (2 months ago), i spoke with some friends, about my interest of learning a language that not only was attached to a web browser, just Javascript and VBScript, this is because in my job i only make things related to web-sites, form validation, database conected sites, dinamic content, well, nothing that without a web browser can be viewed. So when i watched aplications like the Real Jukebox, Win Amp, WinSQl, well all of them, my questions were always:

"Is this hard to make?"
"Is this easy to do?"
"How can i do a similar aplication?"

Well, the answers were allways:

"Learn Visual Basic" (note that my friends are not gurus)

Well, i didnt learn nothing about Visual Basic, and i dont am planning to do so. Then, a friend came and told me all the good things about perl, i was facinated and didn´t let another day passed without read the Llama Book.
Now that i have an idea about what perl can do, i am begginning to wonder, if i can still make visual interfaced applications, with buttons, etc.. (i hope this can be understood).
This question is about how visual can a program be, writed in perl. I understand that the client must have the perl interpreter, but i can deal with this.
Maybe my question is not very clear but i hope you all understand it.
What advice can you give me?

Thanks to all.<br

Edgardo.

Zonaunderground is my Latinamerican underground music site, check it out!

Comment on How visual perl can be?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How visual perl can be? by Kanji (Parson) on Feb 23, 2002 at 03:27 UTC
Jouke wrote a great node about this very thing. --k.	[reply]
Re: How visual can perl be? by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Feb 23, 2002 at 03:40 UTC
The short answer is to investigate Perl/Tk. Try super-searching PerlMonks for "perl tk". You'd be opening up a whole new ball of wax, beyond perl alone, but you can build GUI's with it. Not for nothing, I prefer getting creative building apps with CGI and Javascript. You can't do everything VB can do on the user's (client) machine, but who would want to? :) dmm Just call me the Anti-gates...	[reply]
Re: How visual perl can be? by greywolf (Priest) on Feb 23, 2002 at 06:27 UTC
If your users are will always be using a browser you can use perl to build one helluva CGI application. You can create your pages on the fly, create static pages on the server or a combination of static/dynamic pages. And you will be able to incorporate anything(JavaScript, Flash etc) you would normally put into a web page. mr greywolf	[reply]
Re: How visual perl can be? by Starky (Chaplain) on Feb 23, 2002 at 21:33 UTC
I second the comment about Perl/Tk. You wouldn't want to build Microsoft Word with it, but it is solid, mature, and robust enough for 98% of the GUI applications folks build. I've had tremendous success with it, and folks use applications I've written in Perl/Tk without ever realizing they are written in Perl. They get a nice interface, and I develop the application in half the time. Everybody wins. I'd also like to suggest PerlApp since you sound like you work in the Windows world. It will allow you to compile your code and send Windows executables to your users so they don't have to have Perl installed to run your applications. I've used it to compile very robust Perl/Tk based applications, and it works like a charm. Hope this helps :-)	[reply]
Re: How visual perl can be? by NAstyed (Chaplain) on Feb 23, 2002 at 22:06 UTC
Well, thanks a lot, honestly, you have been very helpfull. Zonaunderground is my Latinamerican underground music site, check it out!	[reply]


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