possible to hide browser and control it programmatically ? .net or vb6

Question

basically using autoit, what happens is that IE windows pops up, and autoit clicks on stuff, and can control it and so on.

what i'd like is a way to hide the browser and still let autoit do it's magic. the browser should not be visible in taskbar or system tray but should be visible as a browser.exe in process window.

autoit solution works for me, but its very annoying that only IE is controllable, and IE must popup each time autoit code runs.

Answer 1

There's a bunch of functions for IE that will let you do things even with hidden browser:

_IECreate , _IELinkClickByIndex so on so forth. The first one has option to start window hidden and then you just play it. Just takes a bit of time to master this :) Check all commands starting with _IE and you should find what you're looking for. It's a bit more complicated then sending simple mouse clicks in right areas but it's a bit more fool proof if you write it correctly (checking for errors etc).

Answer 2

Perl, Ruby and Python all have a module available called "Mechanize", designed to automate interaction with websites. This is a Ruby example: http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/mechanize/GUIDE_rdoc.html