First of all web clients are supposed to be * thin * clients. Although you can beef things up they will never match a * fat/rich * client developed in C++/VB/... etc.
Nowadays the MVC pattern is common good for web development, MVC is a term used to describe how to separate a web application into:
- Model = business logic and data
- View = the presentation to the user (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Applets etc.) based on model data
- Controller = handles the user input, controls the view and notifies model
This gives a clean separation. Your web application does need a certain critical mass otherwise it can be overkill.
There are several Perl modules around implementing the MVC pattern (google, Super Search...)
If you want your pages to look/behave better there are several options: use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript to "enrich" the client but again don't overdo it. A web client should be a thin client.
Update
This site gives excellent examples of how not to do it:-)
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