How in the Tech

Using multiple accounts at the same site at the same time in IE8

By Adam Myers ⋅ August 25, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Internet Explorer

I’m not one that you classify as an Internet Explorer user but I do have a few sites that I frequent that just work better with IE, even after all these years of positive press on Mozilla Firefox. Not surprisingly, one of the sites I typically end up in IE for is our local Sharepoint server, a Microsoft product. Internet Explorer just works better for this web application. I’m not actually an anti-Microsoft zealot; I’m going to use the best tool for the job and be done with it. Recently I noticed a new feature in IE8 that wasn’t present in previous iterations – the ability to start new sessions of the browser.

In Internet Explorer 7 the user is not able to log into the same website twice, but using a different account each time. Many people have multiple Gmail accounts and because of the way browsers handle cookies and session information, it’s impossible to be logged into two Gmail accounts at the same time in the same browser. One overwrites the others session or cookie information – which effectively logs you out of the first account. IE8 introduces the notion of multiple browser windows using different session stores, but they sure don’t make it simple to discover this feature.

The default visual style of IE8, and introduced in IE7, is the hiding of the Menu bar in the browser window – the File Edit View across the top. It’s from the File menu that uncovers the ability to start a new window with a new session.

1. Un-hide the Menu bar in IE8 by right-clicking anywhere in the toolbar and choosing Menu.



2. From the newly revealed File menu choose New session.

There are many reasons why this may be beneficial to you and it’s actually a feature unique to Internet Explorer, as far as I know. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see other browsers copy this feature however.