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It takes some time for Internet Explorer 8 to open new tabs on my computer system even if the tab is a blank tab in the beginning. Observant users will notice the “Connecting” message in the tab when this is happening. This is really frustrating and one of the main reasons why Internet Explorer 8 is only used sporadically. Internet Explorer 8 does however provide information in its interface that make it possible to find out why the tabs are loading that slowly. These information can be looked at in the Tools > Manage Add-ons menu in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft not only lists the installed toolbars, plugins and add-ons but also their loading time. This loading time is added on top of the normal tab loading time in Internet Explorer. It is now easy with the tools at hand to analyze the toolbars and plugins that increase the tab and window loading time in Internet Explorer the most and find ways to deal with the situation.

A right-click on any toolbar or plugin in the add-on’s menu provides the option to disable it right away. Internet Explorer 8 will automatically search for related add-ons giving the user the choice to disable them as well. The loading time of some plugins and toolbars is not displayed in the manager. Disabling these can also have a positive effect on the tab and window loading times in Internet Explorer.

There was not a way for Internet Explorer 7 users to log into two different Gmail (or Hotmail, Yahoo Mail…) accounts at the same time. Gmail can be replaced with any other cookie based web service that asks the user to login. The problem here is that the cookie storing the information about the login will be overwritten when the second login attempt is made. Internet Explorer 8 changes this behavior by introducing so called session cookies. A user wanting to log into an account a second time (or third, fourth..) could therefor start a new session in Internet Explorer 8 to do so. The new session would write a new cookie that would not interfere with the old cookies that have been written in other sessions.

A new Internet Explorer 8 session can be created from the Internet Explorer menu toolbar which might be hidden on your computer system. The fastest way to create a new session if the menu bar is not shown is to press the keyboard combination [Alt f] [i] [enter]. This will open a new Internet Explorer 8 window in a new session. Opening a new tab or window in contrast would share the cookies in Internet Explorer 8. It is furthermore possible to start a new session from the command line by launching iexplore.exe with the -nomerge parameter.

Internet Explorer 8 sessions are a very effective way of accessing multiple accounts at the same web service at once. Microsoft should think about placing that option more dominantly in Internet Explorer 8 as its current position will most likely not be noticed by many Internet Explorer users.

There is not any comparable option in the other Internet browsers yet. Firefox users can use the Gmail Account Manager to manage multiple Gmail accounts but there does not seem to be a feature available that would allow users to log into multiple accounts at all web services.