Folks,
Note: Read my update of Oct 15 (several posts below) before you spend time on this thread.
I have just made a discovery that you all probably made ages ago - but I searched the forum for Easy Copy and didn't find anything.
So - in case somebody didn't know, there is a plug-in for Firefox called Easy Copy. Go to the plug-in manager and look for it.
Once it is installed, it can be configured to copy various information directly to the clipboard:
Title Link
URL
Title
Title link + Selection
BBCode (Forum) link
Wiki link
Page Source
That last one is the most useful for me! The copy options can be turned on and off individually, and to activate the copy, right-click in the page and the menu that pops up includes Easy Copy. You have to move the mouse to the right to select the option, but in the setup, you can also select "Show in Main Menu" for each item above.
There is another plug-in called Keyconfig that has pre-configured options for all the Easy Copy items, and just requires you to select a key combination for them. For me, the only thing I'm interested in is the page source, so I have given it a key combination of Alt + "=", and now, when I press those keys, page source goes directly to the clipboard where I can parse it. This solves a problem that I have had for some time.
URLDownloadToFile doesn't always get personal data that is posted to the screen by Java, and the scripts that have been written for URLDownloadToVar etc have not worked for me either because of permissions. I solved the problem by using Firefox, going to the web page (using Run), sending a Ctrl+U (which displays the page source), then copying it to a file and parsing it there - but that involves displaying the page source on the screen - so this method will be much smoother
I haven't tried it yet, but I presume I will be able to send those keys from AHK then parse the clipboard for what I want. I'll be playing with it tomorrow. Right now, it's 01:45, and bed time.
Just thought you might be interested.