A technique is described herein that receives a set of markup-language documents (e.g., HTML documents). The technique produces a set of object-model representations (VDOMs) based on the set of markup-language documents. For a given markup-language document, the producing operation involves accessing and processing information that is linked to the markup-language document. Each object-model representation also includes visual layout information that specifies a visual appearance of a page that would be produced upon display of the markup-language document by a browser application. The technique then generates transformation logic based on the set of markup-language documents and their corresponding VDOMs. The transformation logic, when applied to a new markup-language document, converts the new markup-language document into a corresponding VDOM without retrieving at least some information identified by links (if any) in the new markup-language document.