When you open a new tab in Internet Explorer 8 Beta, the New Tab page (about:Tabs) opens by default. If you want to start with a blank page or your home page when opening new tab, you can do so using Internet Options.
1. Open Internet Explorer 8
2. Click Tools, Internet Options
3. Under Tabs section, click Settings
4. In When a new tab is opened, open:, choose an option from the drop down box. The available options are:
- A blank page
- The new tab page (default)
- Your first home page

5. Click OK, and OK.
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I recently upgraded to windows 7 and had to re instal internet explorer. i used to be able to open a new tab and it would show me a layout of all my most visited sites. I loved this feature and can’t seem to get it back. Not only can i not get it back in internet explorer but in fire fox either. please help me figure out how to change it back.
Thank you for this really helpful tip.
I actually wanted to stop IE opening a new page everytime I clicked on a link, but sorted out two problems in one!!!! I especially liked the actually screens, so even I couldn’t go wrong.
Thank you once again.
Sonja
Thank you SO much for this simple solution. I didn’t enjoy having that ultra-stupid “You’ve opened a new tab…” page every single time I opened a new tab.
DUH Microsoft… the little checkbox option to ‘not show this page again’ does not work. Most of us have deliberately opened a new tab, so why on earth would we need to be told the obvious?
Such a small thing but very annoying, and now it opens to a blank page like it should subsequently do after the first time one uses an IE browser and ‘learns’ whatever one needs to know about tabs.
Thank you again,
Donna