A web page can be designed to reflect its author's presentation intentions using a Web Information Presentation Structure (WIPS). WIPS represents the web page by its layout and logic structures. A web page authored without WIPS can be subjected to a WIPS detection algorithm to discern the author's presentation intentions by deriving the layout and logic structures of the web page. Once derived, these layout and logic structures can be used to create a re-authored WIPS web page. The re-authored WIPS web page can also be adapted for presentation from one device to a different device in a manner that preserves, to a desirable degree, the author's original intentions. The WIPS detection algorithm uses a function-based object model which attempts to understand the web page author's intention by identifying and using object functions and categories contained in the web page.