Pause and resume in FTP - possible in HTTP?

[pavlovapete]

I was wondering if there is a command that would allow you to grab parts of a HTML page in the same way you can grab (resume) part of a FTP file.

Ideally I'd like to be able to grab the contents of a cell on a page without parsing the whole page.

It would make mashups infinitely easier.

I guess we are dealing with raw bitstreams here - something I know nothing about.

Thanks for any advice.

[janharders]

The problem you'd run into is that you'd have to know, where exactly the data is that you want.
Range-requests may be helpful here, but I don't know if they're widely supported for html-files.

[pavlovapete]

Thanks for your reply janharders

The page would have to be very static and I'd have to look at it first to find the cell (for example).

Do you know if HTML is sent over the wire as raw text or bits that are interpreted as text?

Thanks

[janharders]

How HTML is sent depends on the client and server. It may be compressed if the client indicates his ability to use a certain compression and the server decides to compress the message body. It may be sent in one big piece or chunked.
But as a general rule, it's pretty straight forward and many servers will send it in one big piece, as plain text.