well are you planning on making a windows forms app in VB.NET that will host a webbrowser control? If so then this sounds easy to do. If you are actually trying to automate an external instance of internet explorer, then that will be more difficult. I know you used to be able to create external instances of IE and automate them, but I think support for that has dropped.

Anyway, so if you wanted to make a windows app that hosts the browser control (which is what my example code does) then here are a few key points to keep in mind:

When you navigate to a page, you need to wait for the DocumentCompleted event to fire. This event fires when the page has been fully loaded in the browser. Unlike the navigated event which fires as soon as a navigation has started.

You don't need to send tabs and keystrokes to the webpage when you use the methods shown in my example code. You simply access the pages DOM (document object model) and fill in the needed fields, and click the needed buttons/links.

The only one of your points I am not sure of is number 3? What do you mean by echoing? Does the page post back to the server on every keystroke entered? Is that why you need the wait?