Patent ID: 7584194

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for searching for files on the Internet, the method comprising: finding a target URL; downloading an HTML file for the target URL; downloading supplementary data files used to build a web application, based on information in the HTML file; assembling application components from the supplementary data files and the HTML file; instantiating application components to create the web application; applying data-query interfaces to all media objects in the web application that may contain useful data; loading a pre-defined Application template or generating and automatically defining an Application template; applying the Application template to extract all of the desired information from the web application; saving the desired information to a file or database as a structured data information record; examining all components in the web application to identify all possible components that could respond to a mouse event or form a clickable item; determining which clickable items have appeared since a last simulated mouse event; storing new clickable items in an appropriate data structure on a storage medium, wherein the appropriate data structure is a new branch of a clickable item tree containing all clickable items in the application at all possible application states; simulating a mouse click on a first clickable item in a current branch of the clickable item tree; and repeating this method until the entire clickable item tree has been traversed including, while continuing to instantiate the application components to create the web application, at a subsequent point in time, relating information gathered from examining subsequently loaded and instantiated components of the web application that are displayed at the subsequent point in time.