deal in python objectsnot html syntaxthough you must learn this system' api as well running server-side examples like guisweb-based systems are highly interactiveand the best way to get feel for some of these examples is to test-drive them live before we get into some codelet' get set up to run the examples we're going to see running cgi-based programs requires three pieces of softwarethe clientto submit requestsa browser or script the web server that receives the request the cgi scriptwhich is run by the server to process the request we'll be writing cgi scripts as we move alongand any web browser can be used as client ( firefoxsafarichromeor internet exploreras we'll see laterpython' urllib request module can also serve as web client in scripts we write the only missing piece here is the intermediate web server web server options there are variety of approaches to running web servers for examplethe open source apache system provides completeproduction-grade web serverand its mod_python extension discussed later runs python scripts quickly provided you are willing to install and configure itit is complete solutionwhich you can run on machine of your own apache usage is beyond our present scope herethough if you have access to an account on web server machine that runs python xyou can also install the html and script files we'll see there for the second edition of this bookfor instanceall the web examples were uploaded to an account had on the "starshippython serverand were accessed with urls of this formif you go this routereplace starship python net/~lutz with the names of your own server and account directory path the downside of using remote server account is that changing code is more involved--you will have to either work on the server machine itself or transfer code back and forth on changes moreoveryou need access to such server in the first placeand server configuration details can vary widely on the starship machinefor examplepython cgi scripts were required to have cgi filename extensionexecutable permissionand the unix #line at the top to point the shell to python finding server that supports python used by this book' examples might prove stumbling block for some time to come as wellneither of my own isps had it installed server-side scripting