Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) introduces a feature called accelerators, which are a form of selection-based search which allows users to invoke an online service from any web page by using only the mouse. When accelerators are introduced in IE8 Beta 1, it’s named as actions. Accelerators service is displayed and offered when user selects text or other objects in IE8 (possibly in IE9 too), where a blue square button with a blue arrow been displayed.

IE Accelerators

When users click on the Accelerators blue button, a list of usable Accelerator services or actions will be displayed. For example, Blog with Windows Live, E-Mail with Windows Live, Map with Bing, Translate with Bing, Search with Google, Search with Bing and etc.

Accelerators eliminate the need to copy and paste content between web pages. But not everybody wants to use Accelerators. To make matter worse, any web application or web service developers can create custom accelerator for IE8 with simple XML-based encoding, potentially create a huge list of unused accelerators.

During Internet Explorer 8 First Run Wizard to customize and set up Windows IE8, user has the option to turn off all accelerators. However, even if user opt to turn off and disable to stop using accelerators in IE 8, the Accelerators blue button is still been displayed when user selects and highlights text or content in web page loaded in the web browser. How’s the tip on how to completely and totally remove, disable and turn off the Accelerators feature in IE8.

For your current situation, if you really want to disable the accelerators feature in IE 8, please perform the following steps.

  1. In IE8, click on Tools menu, then click Internet Options.
  2. Go to Advanced tab.
  3. Unselect and uncheck the check box for Display Accelerator button on selection option which is located under Browsing section.

    Disable and Turn Off Accelerators

  4. Click OK.

The Accelerator button with blue arrow and border will be hidden, disabled and removed immediately on any text highlight or selection.