awesome! now we're getting somewhere... i actually had to change the code slightly to
thisNode = ksmContent.firstChild.firstChild.childNodes;
to get it to trace out the nodes properly, but now i have a list of all the nodes in the array, and i've commented them so i know which are which.

i still can't figure out how to use that knowledge to prevent some nodes from displaying , though... (sorry for my denseness); and i also can't figure out how to get the html codes in the text blocks of the <contenttext> nodes to display properly...

any clue?

thanks for all your help!