I have those three methods which does pratically the same thing. They pull out the content from a Web page:

        ' Get the HTML response from a server
        Public Function GetXML() As Boolean
            Dim llSuccess As Boolean = False
            Dim loRequest As System.Net.WebRequest = Nothing
            Dim loResponse As System.Net.WebResponse = Nothing
            Dim loStream As Stream = Nothing
            Dim loStreamReader As StreamReader = Nothing

            ' Reset the values
            cMessage = ""
            cXML = ""

            Try

                ' Get the URL
                loRequest = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(cUrl)
                loResponse = loRequest.GetResponse()
                loStream = loResponse.GetResponseStream()
                loStreamReader = New StreamReader(loStream)
                cXML = loStreamReader.ReadToEnd()

                llSuccess = True
            Catch loError As Exception
                cMessage = loError.Message
            End Try

            Return llSuccess
        End Function

        ' Get the HTML response from a server
        ' expC1 Url
        Public Function GetUrl(ByVal tcUrl As String) As String
            Dim lcHTML As String = ""
            Dim loHTTP As System.Net.WebClient = New System.Net.WebClient
            Dim loEncoding As System.Text.Encoding = New System.Text.UTF8Encoding
            Dim loRequestedHTML() As Byte

            Try
                loRequestedHTML = loHTTP.DownloadData(tcUrl)
                lcHTML = loEncoding.GetString(loRequestedHTML)
            Catch loError As Exception
                lcHTML = loError.Message
            End Try

            Return lcHTML
        End Function

        ' Get the HTML response from a server
        ' expC1 Url
        ' expN1 Timeout
        Public Function GetUrlTimeout(ByVal tcUrl As String, Optional ByVal tnTimeout As Integer = 5000) As String
            Dim lcHTML As String = ""
            Dim lcUrl As New System.Uri(tcUrl)
            Dim loHTTP As System.Net.HttpWebRequest = System.Net.HttpWebRequest.Create(lcUrl)

            loHTTP.Timeout = tnTimeout

            Try
                Dim loWebResponse As System.Net.WebResponse = loHTTP.GetResponse()
                Dim loStream As System.IO.Stream = loWebResponse.GetResponseStream()
                Dim loString As New System.IO.StreamReader(loStream)
                lcHTML = loString.ReadToEnd()
            Catch loError As Exception
                lcHTML = loError.Message
            End Try

            Return lcHTML
        End Function

The first one uses the System.Net.WebRequest, the second one uses System.Net.WebClient and the last one uses System.Net.HttpWebRequest so it can benefit of the timeout feature as well as System.Net.NetworkCredential if I would need to authenticate againsts a Web page. I am looking at a universal method to do it all. I assume the last one would probably be the best to use. Is that correct?

In all of them, no matter if the URL returns an XML or a HTML response, I believe the last method would be able to handle it all.