Drupal 7.x

drupal saves the passwords in some encrpted form that can't be understood or converted back
i have a second application that will use drupal username and password to authenticate to the server
with out involving drupal in between how can i do this
i need the password entered in the application to be converted to drupal 7 hased form so that it can be compared to drupal password hased form in the database but i don't know i can i convert that
so tell me what can i do about it and also some alternative to my approach

I am currently helping my local PBS station redesign their website using a set of templates provided by PBS. It was decided that we should start using a CMS, and we chose Drupal to fill that role.

Never mind...got it

I've just noticed a strange problem with a Drupal 7 website I'm working on.

The search module is enabled, but there is no search form block listed under Structure/Blocks, which is a bit of a nuisance.

I've tried uninstalling, clearing the cache and then reinstalling the search module, and have checked permissions, but nothing gives.

Any ideas?

If anyone can help me with this I would greatly appreciate it. I am new and learning about Drupal as quickly as I can.

Our front page is showing the content title as the browser title. In the administration pages control panel, every one of our pages, in edit view, shows a text box that enables us to assign different content than the page content title for the browser title--except for some reason that I have spent all day trying to figure out, the front page doesn't have an alternate text box for the browser title.

I need to apply a patch to the webform module on localhost, but I cannot find instructions that make sense to me - so I need a for dummies version. I'm running windows 7. I found this post http://drupal.org/node/99903 but nothing that really explains the lines in the batch file. I have never had to patch a module before, and was wondering if someone could simplify the steps. Appreciate the help...