The Live HTTP Headers are a plug-in for Firefox, a web browser in common usage. They allow you to see what your browser sends, so that you can replicate that from Perl.

If you are automating websites using Javascript, some amount of Javascript knowledge is inevitable. I recommend you try to at least vaguely understand the Javscript that the pages use.

None of the solutions can shield you from understanding what goes on between the web browser and the webserver, so I recommend you start familiarizing yourself with that.

Hi Corion - I was able to install the Live HTTP Headers firefox plugin and capture the data being exchanged b/w the webserver and browser.

Here is the last request and response header before finally logging into the application:

https://intra.xyz.com/cmpm/login.cfm?dparm=main

GET /cmpm/login.cfm?dparm=main HTTP/1.1
Host: intra.xyz.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Fire
+fox/7.0.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.
+8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.e-access.xyz.com/pagLogin/?retURL=hxtps%3A%2F%2Fi
+ntra%2Exyz%2Ecom%2Fcmpm%2Flogin%2Ecfm%3Fdparm%3Dmain&sysName=EBIZ
Cookie: CFID=73908; CFTOKEN=fe84f551934ee35f-7BA356FE-1517-3A9B-94017F
+2054750B94; xyzESSec=0080Vfb7DN-d75F8qhbStTSlNXPp8VDwgQ8swtr41Im90s3l
+HiRb6FC4BzZFGGqHhuL5gJ5XgAk8fYffffiHzHsgQx-7KFGEdfSV2LopC20rbI_l795Xs
+8Wk36Ce8ldkmSMkjyyHgDnh9cqEP6RXa6AuoEUEaZT6pzpiadmu6b5_pApNkoHavdnSPg
+S8gLMT2gF_8AChkQj1GT7Kxj78sEI-G5ZXiX819ryZ0wd-W0Cp6pdpHbfYqPUPhkE9fQ1
+L9RjF; xyzESHr=USER%7cNAME%7cUSERID%40ap%2exyz%2ecom%7c%2b1+816+82365
+59%7c%7cjs7856%7c%7cUSERID%2cRTRRDYJ%2cT24B945%2c8620265%7cYNNNNNNNNN
+NNNNYNYYNNNNNN%7cUSER%7cEY1269A00%7c; xyzESg2=006cVfb7DN-d75F8qhbStTS
+lNXPp8VDwgQ8swtr41Im90s0E6WCok9TyV4ePylbGdQXhm5O-RU7O7uZEAC5GGTPAxNSU
+Ha5wvFW_irLNTc4v4PM.zmfWPhfqyBLeXQMbssRNdlgYXv17VWw0cOpxRCuaSHQYU04zT
+nkN20aFNHSdm4hPi4F6l2k1WENRmDaDszWa6tBx_07mAC3kzuvIKl1hD8_rxJofmk6_SU
+gEox5_he5j

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Sun-Java-System-Web-Server/7.0
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:18:10 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
[download]

That's great for you.

Now you just have to find out what your Perl script sends, and eliminate the differences, and you're all set.

If you have further questions, please refer to the answers you already got from me in my above replies.

I find Firebug helpful when debugging JavaScript, it's not a substitute for learning JavaScript but it can help pinpoint problems.