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Best Practice for reading HTML from website

Experts,

In my attempt to teach myself more about programming, some of my ideas include creating a Windows based app for a website.
The application I'm going through now has most of the base data and calculations and just needs basic information from the target website (server based random numbers etc)
At the moment i'm going through Google Chrome developer tools to find the element and the getting that into VS2010

'Something like
Dim ele As HtmlElementCollection
ele = .GetElementsByTagName("TABLE")

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and then through trial and error getting the Index of the table with the information that i'm wanting.

In short...is there an easier way to:
1. Download a Website Text only without using a browser (WebBrower object or IE)
2. Get the information I want without looking through ~50 elements
3. Send a URL request to the server (http://MyWebsite.net/viewpage.php?page_id=21&pid=155561&end=IVC) without the need to load the page and immediately cancel

Any information would be very helpful

-Bromy2004

Dave Baldwin

I'm not sure I understand. If you download from a URL, you will get the HTML page from the server. There is nothing that will get you "Text only". What you get is what you see in the "View Source" in your browser.

bromy2004

ASKER

Thanks Dave, I thought there would be an option to not download the images.
Any tips for point 2 and 3?

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Dave Baldwin

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bromy2004

ASKER

Thank you

Dave Baldwin

You're welcome.