Interesting approach. I've used my own startup HTML page (with all my favorite links as similarly sized images representing the website [often the logo] - essentially my own start menu for the web) and on there I have textboxes which I can use to submit queries that effectively do the same thing on my common sites. Should the website change, it's easier for me to modify some JS than a registry entry so I'll probably stick with my approach but it's nice to recall the power of the registry.

Good question, intriguing answers. Just as important as how much you earn is how much you spend. I worked since high school as much as possible and have always been a big saver, staying with my parents until about 28. At that point I could move out and buy myself a property. I paid off the mortgage aggressively (in less than 10 years) upon realizing bank interest was (and still is) near nothing I had little incentive to keep saving. I'd like a second/investment property but prices in my area (USA, Washington DC) are very high so instead I use my earnings to benefit my many siblings and their families. Life is good, and software development is a fine career.

I also recommend blocking the with a hosts file (others provided a link) and manually adding to it as you find annoying ads on your favorite sites. Also look into Disconnect. It seems Edge is not quite ready with the extensions but when they are available add that and layer the blocking! You have to ignore all the IE haters, as someone that developed websites back in the non-standards days of IE vs Netscape - and had Windows 95 crash and cost me hours of homework - I had my issues with MS! Today I use Bing more than Google and IE11 as my main browser and it's great, plus I have a Surface Book on order - whoop! MS is doing well but some people really seem to enjoy hating them like it's still 2002... Meh, ignore the trolls.

I recommend blocking with a hosts file (others provided the link) and manually add to it if you find sites with annoying ads. It seems Edge is not quite ready with the extensions. You have to ignore all the IE haters, as someone that developed websites back in the non-standards days of IE vs Netscape and had Windows 95 crash and lose my homework - I had my issues with MS but now I use Bing more than Google and IE11 as my main browser and it's great, plus I have a surface book on order - whoop! MS is doing well but for some reason people still think it's 2005 and cool to hate them?? Meh. Ignore the trolls.

I would recommend walking more. That gets you in touch with your neighborhood, out of the house, and can lead to social interactions that a WFH person needs. Driving is not only bad for the environment - it does nothing for your health either. If you live in an area that requires driving I'd consider moving to a walkable/city area - sounds drastic (to suggest moving when you're asking about food) but there is a reason people pay more to live in such places. I carry my groceries, a half-mile walk each way. This means nearly everything I eat has been carried a mile...good for my health, and keeps me from overeating (supplemented by high exercise levels). I'll take exercise breaks during the day, my condo has a pool and I consistently visit there too. I'm only WFH a couple days a week but still find these steps vital to enjoying life and staying healthy. Food for thought.

To continue the fishing analogy this is casting the net 27,000 times in different locations within the sea, I'd say it should return a decent reflection of the overall fish in the Google ocean. Good experiment, I always doubted the billions upon billions of web pages supposedly searched to return my results in a fraction of a second.

Not anytime soon. Windows/Office and other MS products continue to offer great value for the cost, are feature-rich, and quite challenging to compete against. I used to hate Windows 95 for giving me a blue screen and costing me hours of homework effort but looking back at it now...over all the years I've used Microsoft products, they've done an amazing job. If the Surface Pro 4 turns out to be as impressive as I'm expecting, I'll be buying yet another Windows machine. There is nothing wrong with that, the tech giants are competing in various new frontiers (search, mobile, office software, etc) and the consumers are winning!!

This is rapidly becoming that classic monty python sketch... "You had kilobytes?! Ooooooh....pure heaven. We used to have to fight over individual bytes to hold our data!" "Whaaaaat?? You had entire bytes?! Pah, your life was EASY...if we had a singular bit to call our own, we was happy." "Oh really!? My whole neighborhood shared a single floppy disk!" "HRMPH....you mean you had a computer?? Well..."

I may be missing something but I don't see job listings anywhere on the site...millions of devs here and no one is advertising job openings? Can we add a job posting area to the forums? Or am I just blind and it already exists in some form? Now that I'm involved in technical interviews/hiring I've scanned resume after resume rife with typos and lacking relevant experience. I'm starting to take on the job of HR myself to try to get a decent candidate to follow me as lead developer. I was hoping Code Project could help. Thanks.

One I get all the time which I'm surprised I haven't read yet: desktop background == screen saver "Nice screen saver!" they'll say, about a desktop background photo...usually I thank them and follow that by asking "Hey what do they call that animation that appears when your computer is left idle..?" and they fall silent. Prior graphics designer used to quip "let's go digital" when intending to move our newsletter from PDF to HTML format... My mom greatly amuses me with the use of "voice" for computer audio...."my computer has no voice!" she'll say, when the speakers aren't working. However if computers evolve to the point where they naturally converse with users then this will start making a lot of sense.

The Windows monopoly won't die in my lifetime because they can always give away the software and then charge for expansions, templates, bonus features...if it comes to that. They still own the business market and have an insane percentage of the home computing market...plus they're making a charage on mobile fronts which has caught my eye with the Surface 2 Pro. A price drop is always welcome though!

Oooh yeah...that reminds me of a "no-cache" security requirement that was imposed upon me. :sigh: Well thanks for the tip. I may just have to advise users to download the doc locally, then open it.

My users (typically using IE8 or IE9) are downloading DOC/DOCX files from a secure folder in an ASP.NET 4.0 web forms site. The "Trusted Documents" security feature is causing my users to see an "Enable Editing" button which must be clicked before they can edit (or even print) the doc. Problem is, when they click this button Word seems to refetch the document and in the process...loses the fact they are logged in! Thus instead of the document loading a moment later, my "Login Required" web page loads inside Word 2010... :doh: This is very annoying to users as they must then close the document and redownload it - at which point (having trusted the document already) it opens just fine. Is there a way around this unpleasant user experience? I cannot move the files to any area which wouldn't require a login...and I certainly cannot remove a security feature from end user machines...

14 years experience 4 companies One folded the branch I worked at after 4 years (I was picked up by the sub-contractor), I left that sub a couple years later out of boredom after programming myself out of a job, Another (non-profit) paid ludicrous wages for 9 months then could no longer afford me, Lastly my current position... All still exist and the current corp is a goliath that will "never" die, going on 7 years working for them. I do get (small) raises yearly and the pay/work/commute/people combo is hard to beat so I am grateful. I must upgrade my skills though, it is easier to get complacent when doing the same job for an extended period, hard to leave when that job is awesome. I may move to the white hot cyber security realm from my web development background...if I can just motivate myself to study/work after a long workday ends...*sigh*