click() takes the name of the button as an argument, in your example the name is 'submit', and the value is 'Submit' (one is capitalized, the other is not.) If you want to click a button by value, you can use the click_button() method...

$mech->click_button( value => 'Submit' );
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Actually, in his example there was no name. The type was 'submit', though.

There was also no Perl code in his example.

You need a form first (buttons outside of form tags won't work)

use WWW::Mechanize;

$ua=WWW::Mechanize->new;
$ua->get('http://cpan.org');#no forms, contrast with search.cpan.org
warn $ua->forms;
warn $ua->submit;
__END__
Warning: something's wrong at - line 6.
Can't call method "make_request" on an undefined value at C:/Perl/site
+/lib/WWW/Mechanize.pm line 1641.
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I've got no experience with www::mech, but I know it doesn't support javascript.

Although this is true, if the application is well built it shouldn't matter, you should still be able to submit the form and have the validation done server side, any client-side validation done in javascript should be repeated on the server, since you can't trust the client to validate it's own input.

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We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!

agreed jasonk, and attribute this to my lack of experience with the module, but I was just assuming (and we all know what assuming leads to) that the javascript was the perpetrator. maybe there's something before the button that's causing some undesired performance?

meh.

As dhoss notes, WWW::Mechanize won't handle JavaScript, and that may be important here, but I wonder if it might be that there's no form selected for it to click in. If you could show us your code, that might help.