visual way to program browser?

[peter]

Everyday I browse a number of classified ad web sites searching for specific
items.

Is there a way to automate IE to do this without writing perl script or vba
script from scratch?

Any visual-oriented programming tools? Something similar to the "record
macro" in excel would be ideal.

 

[RobertVA]

Everyday I browse a number of classified ad web sites searching for specific
items.

Is there a way to automate IE to do this without writing perl script or vba
script from scratch?

Any visual-oriented programming tools? Something similar to the "record
macro" in excel would be ideal.

Depends on how the sites implement their search function. If they use
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) you may be able to simply create a
bookmark/favorite for the first result page from the search. You can
recognize CGI by the prsence of "?" and "=" in the address bar. When I
searched for "CGI" in Google it lead me to
http://www.google.com/search?client...-US:official_s&hl=en&q=cgi&btnG=Google+Search"
.. Note the "?" after "search" and serveral cases of "=" within the CGI
information. I copied the above URL to the clipboard and pasted it to
the address bar of a completely different browser (NOT just another
window in the same browser) and got the same search results.