Ben Forta

I have long been a fan of cyScape’s BrowserHawk, a simple and focused utility that does one thing and does it well, reporting browser capabilities (browser, version, operating system, version of Flash installed, cookies enabled or not, and more), over 100 properties in all. To see what BrowserHawk is capable of detecting, go to http://www.browserhawk.com/showbrow.asp.
BrowserHawk now comes in a Java flavor (BrowserHawk4J) and this is the preferred version for use with ColdFusion MX. Look at the following code snippets.
BrowserHawk4J is initialized with or CreateObject() calls, like this:


Once initialized, simple methods may be used to obtain browser settings (flags and values):















Settings may then be displayed or used as needed:

Browser is: #browser# #version#
JavaScript enabled? #jsenabled#
Session cookies? #session#
Persistent cookies? #persistent#
Screen size: #width#x#height#
Available browser window size: #widthAvail#x#heightAvail#
Plugin_Flash: #flash#
Plugin_FlashVerEx: #flashverex#
Plugin_Director: #director#
Plugin_DirectorVerEx: #directorverex#
ColorDepth: #depth#
Plugin_Acrobat: #acrobat#

If your applications need to be client capability aware, BrowserHawk is a must, and now with better ColdFusion support than ever. You can learn more (and obtain an evaluation version) at http://www.browserhawk.com/.