More specifically, I really don't like the embed-one-language-in-another thing, primarily for maintainability reasons. A Mason-based website needs maintainers who understand HTML, Perl and Mason -- even if the first two knowledges are fairly common, and the third is fairly easy to pick up, it's a significant hurdle to ease of maintainability; and if a site can't be maintained easily/effectively by all of the people that admin it then quality will really suffer.

When it comes to more complex issues than simply serving web pages (eg performance and security) a still more rigorous knowledge of Mason will be required, in addition to the Perl-knowledge; resulting in a site that significantly fewer people could maintain well than could maintin a comparable perl-only site.

That aside, this is an excellent book -- in particular Ch 8: Building a Mason Site, Ch 9: Mason and CGI and Ch 11: Recipes make it easy to get to grips with real application of the language, work out how to do what you want to do, and put into play a Mason site quickly and efficiently.

Oh, and the answer to the most important question is -- it's an Arabian baboon

By a "Perl-only site", do you mean one where output is generated purely by code (either mod_perl handlers or scripts called via CGI, Apache::Registry, and so on?

If you think that's more maintainable than a template-based site, I think you're quite mistaken. What does a designer who only knows HTML do in a pure Perl environment? She makes HTML and hands it off to developers, who then have to break it into chunks and stick it in code.

I've seen that with a reasonably well-factored Mason-based site, HTML developers can learn pretty quickly not to touch the Mason parts, and are capable of making many changes without developer help. Major overhauls still require cooperation with the developers, but that's probably a good thing anyway. This means developers have more time to focus on real bug fixes and new features. How is that less maintainable?

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.