pass password to perl encrypted...help!

Hello... this is my first post.

A quick disclaimer:
I'm not sure if General Web Design is the best place for this, and please excuse any of my ignorance which may be blatantly apparent to everyone else.

Anyway, I want to have the password=mypassword name/value pair say something like other websites do...
ex: pass=a6g7s8g9s6gf23
when a user logs in. (right now you can just see the password after a click of the submit button)

Here's what I have now: html -> perl -> java -> html -> perl -> java -> html etc., etc.

My site is complete except for this issue. I'm using Linux (RedHat 9), MySQL, Apache, and the stuff above. I've seen replies to other very similar posts but the solutions given generally involve PHP. Is there a solution involving perl.

Now, I'm confusing myself. Maybe this encryption needs to go into javascript. I would like not to involve a pop-up window for login like htaccess, or whatever its called, just a submit button along with login,password <input> fields. Oh yeah, I'm using POST not GET if this is important at all.

Any help would be appreciated even it's just informing me of a more appropriate area to post this. Thanks.