looking for the correct _IE function

[RogerRabbitsClone]

so i wanted to create a really simple, almost retarded web crawler. i mean REALLY simple. i started with this:

$LowerLimit = 7
$UpperLimit = 777
$RandomNumber = Random($LowerLimit,$UpperLimit,1)

shellexecute ("iexplorer");google is homepage
sleep (3000)
send ($randomnumber & " xxx")
send ("{TAB}");send tab about 20 times
send ("{enter}")
sleep (3000)

then repeat the send tab, send enter a bunch of times hopefully click a bunch of external links. big surprise, this did not work to well.

heres my question, can i make this easier for myself of i just throw together some _IE functions? ive never used them, and i want to keep this a 1-2 day project because its part of something larger. i kinda blew through them but couldnt find one that explicitly said "this will find <a href...> and extract the link. is this something i have to do, or is there a UDF for this already?

or is _IEbodyreadHTML/text what im looking for and im just to stupid to apply them?

anything appreciated.

[DoubleMcLovin]

Here is a "smart" way of going to the google homepage, and searching for something. Here is a little example of the _IE... functions that fits your needs. The most important thing you need to do when trying to find the IE object to interact with is finding the <form name=""> line in the source code and getting that name.

#include <IE.au3>
$value = 1
$oIE = _IECreate("http://google.com",1)
If $oIE = 0 Then
    ;failed instance of IE, just try again in most cases or manually kill all processes of IE. You can expand on this if you want.
    ConsoleWrite ("Failed _IECreate")
    Exit
EndIf
$oForm = _IEFormGetObjByName ($oIE, "f")    ;finds the form containing the search bar and button
$search = _IEFormElementGetObjByName ($oForm,"q")   ;the search bar
_IEFormElementSetValue ($search,$value)
$oButtons = _IETagNameGetCollection ($oIE, "input")
For $oButton In $oButtons
    If $oButton.name = "btnG" Then 
        _IEAction ($oButton, "click")
    EndIf
Next

[DaleHohm]

Just look at the example for _IELinkGetCollection in the helpfile.

Dale