Hm, i have made the feature also a Blender addon. It is here: http://www.reinerstilesets.de/anderes/blender-addons/mode-tab-buttons/
So that would be a way to have the icon buttons displayed or removed. But also here the problem that there is no way to hide the dropdown box for the modes. And the addon version has a few quirks. Using external icons in Blender UI is not solved in the nicest way. It is laggy.
I guess i will remove the icon buttons at one point again. The fastest and most convenient way is to use hotkeys to switch between modes. You use the feature to switch modes too much. And Bforartists has standard hokteys here. 1 to 8 above the letters.