Well, of course there's no way that generating code programatically is going to be any faster than static strings. However, I have to say it over and over: Speed is not everything. Before you worry about speed, figure out how slow your solution is. Chances are it's unnoticeable.

print   start_html( PAGE_TITLE ),
        h1( PAGE_TITLE ),
        start_form( -method=>"GET", -action=>$q->self_url ),
        input( {type=>"text",name=>"text",size=>40, value=>$text} ),
        input( {type=>"text",name=>"width",size=>5, value=>$width} ), 
+" pixels wide",
        submit( -value=>"Muck!" ),
        end_form(),
        table( {border=>1,cellspacing=>0,cellpadding=>0},
                Tr( th( "Original" ), th( "Mucked" ) ),
                Tr(     td( img( {src=>$filename} ) ),
                        td( img( {src=>"mucked-$filename"} ) ),
                        ), # tr
                ), # table
        end_html();
[download]

You can see the entire structure of the page right there. I can't goof up closing TABLE tags (a particular bane of Netscape), everything has to be well-formed, etc etc etc. Is that worth a few milliseconds of execution time? In my book, yes.

xoxo,
Andy

# Andy Lester  http://www.petdance.com  AIM:petdance
%_=split';','.; Perl ;@;st a;m;ker;p;not;o;hac;t;her;y;ju';
print map $_{$_}, split //,
'andy@petdance.com'