If you’ve ever tried to build a bot that only "clicks where I click," you’ve likely experienced the frustration of a workflow breaking the moment a window resizes or a banner pops up. To build professional-grade automation, you need to change your perspective. You aren't just automating a screen; you are interacting with a structured digital blueprint. Welcome to the first step of your advanced journey: Thinking in HTML.
Two Perspectives of the Same Webpage
To master RPA, you must learn to see the web through two different lenses simultaneously.
The Visual Perspective (What You See)
When you open a page like the IMDb Top 250, your eyes see a polished interface. You see movie posters, clickable titles, and numerical rankings. This is the "User Interface" (UI).
The Code Perspective (What Octoparse AI Sees)
Now, right-click any movie title and select "Inspect." A panel filled with text and angle brackets < > appears. This is the Source Code. It is a structured text document that looks nothing like the visual page.
The Transformation: The browser acts as a "translator." It reads this raw text, parses the logic, and renders it into the visual page you see.
The RPA Secret: While humans need the rendered version to understand the data, RPA bots work much faster and more accurately by talking directly to the raw source code.
The HTML Element: The DNA of Web Content
If a webpage is a building, HTML Elements are the bricks. Every single item you see on a screen is defined by an element in the code.
The Anatomy of an Element: A typical element consists of three parts:
Opening Tag:
<tagname>(e.g.,<a>for a link).Content: The actual data (e.g., "The Shawshank Redemption").
Closing Tag:
</tagname>(e.g.,</a>).
Direct Correspondence: If you search for "The Shawshank Redemption" in the source code, you will see it wrapped inside these tags.
Key Takeaway: There is a 1-to-1 relationship between visual components and code elements. If it’s on the screen, it has a "home" in the HTML.
The Invisible Connection: How RPA Works
This is the "Aha!" moment for many developers. Why does Octoparse AI ask you to "Capture" an element?
Not Just Pixels: When you click a movie title in Octoparse AI, the software doesn't record the screen coordinates (like "200 pixels from the left"). Instead, it scans the HTML code.
Extracting the DNA: It identifies the element’s Tag Name and Attributes. It then generates an XPath—a specific "digital address" that points to that exact spot in the code structure.
Why It’s Stable: Because Octoparse AI interacts with the code structure, the bot can still find the "Submit" button even if it moves to a different part of the screen or if the page colors change.
Summary: Mastering the Blueprint
Building an automation without understanding HTML is like trying to build a house without looking at the blueprints. By recognizing that a webpage is a structured document rather than a flat image, you gain the power to build bots that are precise, stable, and incredibly fast.
Now that you know the web is made of code, how do we describe a specific element when there are thousands of them? In the next guide, "The Anatomy of an Element: Tags, Attributes, and Hierarchy," we will dive into the specific "vocabulary" used to pinpoint any piece of data on the web.