How can you run a Basic (like the programing langauge not he word) program in a HTML document?

Question

I think it has something to do w/CGI (Computer Gateway Interface) where the input is put on one page and the outcome is presented on another page or is there some other way

i ment to say "the word" in the the title

Answer 1

Ive done this with basic programs on my webservers. Its not different than standard CGI (common gateway interface).

The inputs can be done by an HTML "form" which creates the input fields. Something like this...
http://www.dom3minions.com/lab/MakeGame.htm
If you right-click that page you should be able to "view source" and see how it was done.

When the enter button is pressed (in this case, make game) then the CGI specified is run (in this case, MakeGame.cgi). The CGI can be any executable script or program on your system in any language.

The form will pass all of the form data as a long string with
name=variable&name=variable&name=variable
So your basic program needs to accept all of the variables as one long string then parse them out.

The webserver will be waiting for the response so your basic program needs to output its results in standard html.

Answer 2

You can write programs in VBScript or JavaScript and put them in SCRIPT tag. This is the best way of running programs in HTML document. Other than that, you may think of some higher level languages, such as PHP or PERL embedded in HTML document itself to do some advanced things that include Server side interactions.