Since you're using CGI anyway, why not use a little more of it like so:

#!/usr/bin/perl

  # why would you do this? it'll just messup the CGI form processing..
+.
  # my $buffer;
  # read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});


use strict;
use warnings;

use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

my $cgi = new CGI;
my $method = lc( $cgi->request_method ); # why?

my $counter = 1;

print $cgi->header, $cgi->start_html({
    title  => "My Page",
    script => qq(var counter=$counter)});
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I have to admit, I don't really know how to use frames. I believe you'd have to print those by hand like this (or something similar to it):

print $cgi->header, $cgi->html( $cgi->frameset({ cols=>"75%,45%" }) );
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