Nikhil Kothari's tool here, may be what we need to be able to work with IE like we can work in FireFox when using FireBug. Here's what he says about it:
"Web Development Helper is a free browser extension for Internet Explorer that provides a set of tools and utilities for the Web developer, esp. Ajax and ASP.NET developers. The tool provides features such as a DOM inspector, an HTTP tracing tool, and script diagnostics and immediate window."
I'm going to check it out, and I hope it helps.
Web Development Helper