Over Viewing the Interface - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 60

When the parameter is set to TRUE , which is by default, you will see the
following screenshot:
Opening a new phpMyAdmin window
Sometimes we want to compare data from two tables at once or have other needs for
more than one phpMyAdmin window. At the bottom of almost every page, a small
icon is available to open another window in phpMyAdmin with the current panel's
content. Moreover, this icon can be used to create a browser bookmark that points to
the current phpMyAdmin page (but we should log in to access the data).
User preferences
One instance of phpMyAdmin can be installed to serve multiple users; however,
before version 3.4.0, these users had to be content with the parameter values as
chosen by the person in charge for this instance.
It's true that some pages on the interface has allowed tweaking specific parameters
and that some of these were remembered in cookies, for example, the chosen
language; but this version is the first to offer a global mechanism for adjusting and
remembering preferences per user.
Even in the case where the instance has only one user, it's more convenient to
be able to fine-tune preferences from the interface rather than manipulating the
configuration file.