Prevent Internet Explorer tabs from opening tabs in stack in taskbar

Problem

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate, and IE 8, and have the taskbar in icon view. I'm not sure how to explain this, but I'm amazed at how each tab in IE8 seems to act like a new "thing" in the taskbar (as if each tab was a window). Each tab acts like a different window in the taskbar although they are actually running in the same window. Now when I use IE 8 it looks (in the taskbar) like there's 15 windows open when in fact the taskbar is simply showing the 15 tabs. More simply put, it's displaying a "stack" for all of the tabs when I'd rather have the icon act like, for example, Firefox so that a stack is only shown for the multiple windows. Is there a way to disable this strange "taskbar" effect? I'd rather have the taskbar show the main window and not the tabs individually. There has to be a simple way to do this.