^ events happen before some/most (but not all) of the defualt actions mirc takes based on said irc server signal, raws from memory also occur before mircs default action.
In ^ events you can use halt/haltdef to stop the default action (or at least it displaying) obvious exceptions occur like you cant stop mirc from adding someoen to the nciklist of a channel; when they join no matter if u have a ON ^JOIN { halt } or not. but you could stop the join message displaying in the chanenl for instance.
As to the other things you mentioned about updating then and there, im not sure what your talking about either way sorry.
