Extracting html elements in a given region?

Question

Given a region defined by a rectangle and a url, is there any way to determine what elements lie within the given rectangle on the page at the given url?

EDIT: Screen resolution, Font size, etc.. can all be set to reasonable defaults.

Answer 1

• Get the document from the URL.
• Render it (in a browser).
• For each element in the browser's DOM:
  • Get the rectangle[s] occupied by the element.
  • Compare the element's rectangle with the rectangle you're interested in.