A similar question has been addressed with WebBrowser Control however I'd like to ask how to directly manipulate document modes with a VBS initialized/controlled instance of InternetExplorer.Application - or how to apply the registry fix in the above mentioned post to this scenario.
Currently I'm employing a rather poor solution of simulating keyboard input for the appropriate shortcuts to access the IE8 debugger and setting the mode through that interface (F12 -> Alt+8). However I would hope that this is not the most efficient solution, particularly since VBS SendKeys tends to 'miss' the target application on slower machines regardless of AppActivate usage. Of course this can most probably be done with a high degree of success with SendMessage/PostMessage (via called external executable that has access to those methods), but again a more direct means of automating this via the object itself would be much appreciated.
To put in more specific context, the automation script (+ executable)'s purpose is to simulate mouse clicks & handle dialogs on a web-interface controlled database for batch addition of record information from various sources; it so happens that there is a particular button at one stage of the process that simply goes missing in quirks mode (elements are located by DOM displayed attributes), effectively halting the entire operation. (While the onclick code of that missing button can be compiled from strings contained in various elements on the page being a server-specific jscript function call, for the sake of future proofing I'd like to avoid doing this in the event that the function is changed)