DDE

HI
I want to do a DDE betwween the a browser(both IE and Netscape) and my application. In short I want to bring back the some text shown on browser back to application.
How I intended to do. Say I want to bring back my mail contents from the hotmail to my application.(just and example).

When ever the contents page of the hotmail gets loaded, the active X which I will embed into the contents page of hotmail, will get launched. It will retieve and keep the text/contenats of the email with in itself.
From my application, on the click of a button, I will get connected to the ActiveX server and retrieve the text.
Problem: Active X behaves rather strangely with Netscape.

I would like to know about the methods that could be used to implement this. I am open to using any platform or language. etc. Browser page is always Html.(ASP etc NO!!!)
Thanks in advance