2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: in response to determining that the first visible content element is a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements, performing at least one task on each visible content element of the group; and in response to determining that the first visible content element is not a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements, performing the at least one task on the first visible content element and not on other visible content elements.
1. A method comprising: identifying a first visible content element of at least one markup language document; and automatically determining whether the first visible content element is a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements, wherein the automatically determining comprises: analyzing a layout of visible content elements of the at least one markup language document in an area of the at least one markup language document that includes the first visible content element to determine whether the layout indicates that the first visible content element is a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements; and analyzing one or more markup elements of the at least one markup language document to determine whether the one or more markup elements indicate that the first visible content element is a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements, wherein the step of analyzing the one or more markup elements comprises the steps of: determining, from a hierarchical arrangement of content elements of the markup language document, a set of candidate content elements including the first visible content element and content elements directly above the first visible content element in the hierarchical arrangement; evaluating each one candidate content element of the set to determine whether the one candidate content element includes a group of visible content elements that includes the first visible content element and is distinct from surrounding visible content elements, wherein evaluating each one candidate content element of the set comprises the steps of: analyzing a layout of the markup language document in an area of the one candidate content element; analyzing the one candidate content element with respect to a plurality of factors to determine a score for each factor; calculating an overall score for the one candidate content element based on the scores for the plurality of factors; determining a highest-scoring candidate content element of the set; in a case that the highest-scoring candidate content element includes one or more other visible content elements in addition to the first visible content element, determining that the first visible content element is a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements; and in a case that the highest-scoring candidate content element does not include any other visible content elements in addition to the first visible content element, determining that the first visible content element is not a member of a group of visible content elements distinct from surrounding visible content elements.