The user, while entering, should not be able to see the password...or atleast see *s

<input type="password" name="password" size="20">
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Make a form, using the above, to send the password to your script. The user will see ****** when they type, but the script will recieve the password in the same way as any other text. If you have the password encrypted in a file, you then crypt the password sent to the script, and then compare the two crypted passwords. I don't see why you need special modules to do this... could you explain some more?