I have a need to spider websites to look for certain HTML elements and determine their X/Y coordinates when rendered in a browser.

I can think of two approaches:

1. Use a client workstation and a custom web application to download the page, use javascript to find the HTML using DOM and then report the coordinates back and get the next page.

Pros: I can do this without a steep learning curve.
Cons: Ties up a workstation doing a batch job. Kludgey. Javascript.

2. I think Mozilla XPCOM can do this, and there even exists a Perl interface to XPCOM.

Pros: single program, single computer solution.
Cons: Don't know for sure that XPCOM can actually do this, I have a question in over there to make sure. A wicked learning curve if it can.

My question is, have I missed an alternative approach?

In reply to Unique spidering need by cleverett

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