Well, the second version is just creating a normal html link, and will only activate when the user clicks on it. Not having anything between the tags for them to click on makes this a little hard.

I don't know javascript, so I can't comment on the first. But initially, forget about perl or cgi: draft up a static page with the HTML you require, and then just wrap print statements around it (with suitable escapes, and variables inserted, of course)