Ben Forta

I spent some time today playing with the latest version of BrowserHawk (sent to me by Richard Litofsky of cyScape, thanks). If you’ve never heard of BrowserHawk, it is a server-side utility which reports browser capabilities and features (whether cookies are enabled or not, which plug-ins are installed, screen sizes, and more). For sites that strive to deliver highly custom content, BrowserHawk has long been the tool of choice. I’ve tinkered with BrowserHawk on and off ever since the very first version was released way back when, and have always been a fan of the product (especially as it has always featured CF integration). But with the more recent versions becoming more dependent on COM for some of the more advanced detection features, the ColdFusion implementation did not provide the same level of sophistication as did some other implementations. But all that has changed. cyScape has created a Java version of BrowserHawk, and as ColdFusion MX provides total access to the Java world this version works perfectly with ColdFusion. The result? Clean integration, and no compromises. To download a trial version, or to see BrowserHawk in action, go to http://www.cyscape.com/.