HTML Layout Problem

Question

Hi guys
I am parsing html source to extract the different html elements. Now that i have extracted elements, i need to identify the position of these elements.
how is it possible to extract the position of the elements of a web page (ie: image position, paragraph position ect) ? I am not creating a browser, i jst need to know the position of elements within a webpage.
i already have a java html parser, do i need to parse the casscade style sheets to identify the positions? if so, do u know where i can get css parser who can do that?
I have heard that identifying the position of html elements within a web page can be done using Microsoft DHTML, if anyone knows about that please i would be grateful if he can clarify more.
I dont need to do this using java, I will try to implement it using other language if needed ,if anyone has come accross this problem before or knows anything please provide some help.
thanx alot

Answer 1

You will be getting into a philosophical argument here. The 'purists' will tell you that HTML is a markup language that simply arranges elements relative to one another. Images, for example, may be absolutely sized, but text is layed out according to screen dimensions. The 'artists' will tell you that those types of web pages are invariably not 'good enough'. So, they will lay-out the elements on the page using layers to enforce as much control over the final rendering as possible.
In answer to your question, yes the browser 'knows' how it will lay the page out. However, you cannot access that data from within the browser (normally). Your options are either to use relative (traditional) or absolute (layer) layouts. Unless you communicate to the browser, via layers, how you want something exactly layed out, it will follow the W3C spec and some of its own assumptions.
- Saish