Mechanoid Web Browser - Recording Capability

[Seymour]

I am trying to find a way to sign onto my Wall Street Journal account
(http://online.wsj.com/public/us) and automatically download various
financial pages on stocks and mutual funds that I am interested in
tracking.  I have a subscription to this site and am trying to figure
out how to use python, which I have been trying to learn for the past
year, to automatically login and capture a few different pages.
I have mastered capturing web pages on non-password sites, but am
struggling otherwise and have been trying to learn how to program the
Mechanoid module (http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/mechanoid) to get
past the password protected site hurdle.

My questions are:
1. Is there an easier way to grab these pages from a password protected
site, or is the use of Mechanoid a reasonable approach?
2. Is there an easy way of recording a web surfing session in Firefox
to see what the browser sends to the site?  I am thinking that this
might help me better understand the Mechanoid commands, and more easily
program it.  I do a fair amount of VBA Programming in Microsoft Excel
and have always found the Macro Recording feature a very useful
starting point which has greatly helped me get up to speed.

Thanks for your help/insights.
Seymour