BrowserHawk combines a powerful set of features to provide you with the ultimate browser detection tool. These features result in highly accurate and reliable browser detection, requiring very little or no maintenance at all!

Here are just a few of BrowserHawk’s powerful benefits and features at a glance:

Accuracy: BrowserHawk is the most accurate means for recognizing browsers, search engines, and other such agents and their associated capabilities. In addition to recognizing every single Netscape and Internet Explorer user agent without exception, BrowserHawk also recognizes more than 9 times as many user agents as versions of browscap.ini and other forms of browser detection. And best of all, it even recognizes new browsers automatically!

Reliability: BrowserHawk is designed to proactively handle many of the "gotchas" that have traditionally haunted older browser detection methods – providing you with reliability you can count on. No longer will you return to the office to see that the latest release of a popular browser has caused thousands of visitors to have their browser treated as "unknown".

100% Maintenance FREE! With browser software changing so rapidly, the need to keep you browser definition information current has never been greater. But a task such as this requires you to constantly track down and keep on top of new definition files, installing them as soon as possible. Right? Not any longer. BrowserHawk is designed to be 100% maintenance free. It automatically checks with the cyScape server for updated definition files, and downloads and installs them for you while you sleep! What if you have customizations to your definitions? No problem. BrowserHawk will automatically merge them into the updated definitions for you before installing the update. It even sends you an email notification informing you that a new definition file was downloaded and installed, including a full description on what's been updated in the new release. Just set it and forget it! This feature is available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions.

Disabled cookie detection: BrowserHawk features the CookieDetector which allows you to accurately determine whether a use has disabled their cookies. You can even detect the difference between disabled session cookies and disabled permanent cookies with IE 5.0 and later. This advanced cookie detection allows you to notify users with disabled cookies that they need to enable their cookies, before they try to use parts of your site which will not operate correctly with cookies disabled.

Disabled JavaScript and Java applet detection: BrowserHawk easily and accurately detects all visitors that come to your web site with their Java applets or JavaScript disabled. Many sites depend on the user having these features enabled to function properly. With BrowserHawk you can now ensure that these features are enabled and properly handle users with disabled applets or JavaScript. This feature is available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions of BrowserHawk.

Plug-in detection: BrowserHawk detects the presence of several plug-ins, such as Macromedia’s Flash and Shockwave, as well as Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, MediaPlayer, and QuickTime. This enables you to know exactly what content, if any, should be streamed to the visitor’s browser. This feature is available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions of BrowserHawk.

User connection speed detection: BrowserHawk detects the visitor’s connection speed, measured in bits per second. This information is extremely valuable in knowing what is the best content to send to the visitor. For example, if the user is on a dial-up connection at 56Kbps you may wish to send a slimmed down version of movies or graphics than you would for a user on a DSL or T1 connection. This feature is available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions of BrowserHawk.

Screen size resolution detection: BrowserHawk detects the visitor’s screen resolution. For example, 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high. In addition it also detects the available size of the browser window, which is typically smaller than the screen resolution due to task bars, menus, and browser windows which are not maximized. Used this data to ensure that table and other layouts are presented optimally for your visitor’s view. This feature is available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions of BrowserHawk.

Real-time stats and tracking with Performance Monitor: BrowserHawk provides unique, detailed browser statistics currently not available with traditional web stats reporting software packages. For example, you can see in real-time the number of visitors with disabled cookies and JavaScript, Flash level support, screen size resolution, and much more! In addition you can also closely monitor and track the cyScape DashCache parameters to enable you to finely tune BrowserHawk for optimal performance in your environment. This feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition of BrowserHawk.

Reverse DNS lookup: Using BrowserHawk's ResolveIP method you can easily determine what host name a visitor is coming from based on their IP address.

Detection of wireless devices: BrowserHawk detects Wireless Application Devices (WAP), PDAs (such as Palm Pilots), and NTT DoCoMo devices as well. This feature makes detecting and supporting wireless devices considerably easier.

Ready to use Browser Troubleshooting script: BrowserHawk includes our browserinfo.asp script to help you quickly collect browser details from visitor’s which are having browser issues with your site. This script automatically collects all the details of the visitor’s browser, asks the visitor for a description of the program and their contact information, and then automatically emails the problem report with all the details to you for analysis. You can also easily modify the script to write the information to a database if you wish.

Properties based on Cookies, Environment variables, and more: You can define Filters in BrowserHawk which allow you to set or override a browser's property based on the contents of any cookie or server environment variable. This provides greater programming flexibility and convenience for the developer.

Integration with Microsoft InterDev: BrowserHawk integrates with InterDev for great convenience while designing your web page. This allows you to use Microsoft's IntelliSense feature, which displays all of BrowserHawk's available properties as you type.

Over 70 properties: Beyond just the basic browser capabilities such as tables, frames, and cookies, BrowserHawk provides advanced capability information on several other valuable properties. These properties include WAP, PDA, ConnectionSpeed, Plugin_Flash, Height, Width, JavaScriptEnabled, CookiesEnabled, FileUpload, MouseOver, Authenticode, SSL, SSLKeySize, StyleSheets, DHTML, XML, AOLVersion and even layout-oriented properties such as font color, table background colors, and much more. In total BrowserHawk supports over 70 properties and we are continuing to expand this information.

Visual browser definition editor: BrowserHawk includes an intuitive, easy to use Editor which makes viewing, testing, modifying, and even creating new browser definitions a breeze. You can also customize or add new browser properties, and create filters for advanced browser detection. The BrowserHawk Editor provides a tree-like view of all your defined browsers, grouped visually into folders by manufacturer or "family". The Editor also makes updating a browser capability for one or more browsers a breeze with just the click of the mouse – which means no more rummaging through thousands of lines of definitions in a .ini file! The BrowserHawk Editor makes managing and maintaining your definitions a true delight.

Advanced user agent matching: BrowserHawk supports true search expressions including wildcard characters as well full support for setting a range of wildcard values (i.e. Mozilla/4.0[3-9]*). And, you can use as many wildcard characters as you’d like for each user agent match string. The result is unprecedented accuracy and reliability in recognizing browsers and their capabilities.

Conditional property settings with Filters: Yet another powerful feature BrowserHawk provides is Filters. Filters provide a powerful mechanism for overriding an assigned property value with a new value, based on keywords or characters that occur within user agent strings. This allows you to define rules, under which a special property value is assigned for user agents which match your defined rules. Filters provide additional power to your browser detection, and help keep browser definitions to a minimum - making for simplified maintenance.

Browser Hit Test tool (Professional and Enterprise Editions): BrowserHawk provides an advanced browser Hit Tester that will prove invaluable to those of you adding new definitions or customizing existing ones. Because of the dynamic nature of BrowserHawk’s property settings and the use of filters, just viewing the default capabilities for a given browser is not always indicative of what the final property settings will be after filters are applied. This is due to variations in the user agent strings. The Hit Tester allows you to test any specific user agent you wish, and instantly shows all the final property values settings after all filters have been applied. You can even import a list of user agents to test your definitions as needed.

Automatic Version Detection (AVD): BrowserHawk's AVD has advanced built-in intelligence for automatically recognizing the version number contained in the browser’s user agent string. This eliminates the need to create a separate browser definition for each user agent. Instead, one browser definition is used which can handle all variations of a version number within a string – as the version number properties are detected and set at run-time. As new versions of browsers are released, BrowserHawk will automatically recognize the browser and its capabilities, even though there is no specific definition for it. For example, a change in version number from Internet Explorer 4.01 to 4.02 will still be recognized – even without a specific entry for it in your definitions!

Integrated definition file updates (subscribers only): Browser definitions are constantly changing, and we’ve made downloading and installing the latest updates as simple as clicking your mouse. Just press the Download button on the toolbar, and BrowserHawk will check cyScape’s server to see if your definitions need updating. If so, it will automatically log you on to our server and download the latest definition file for you. You can even choose to have BrowserHawk automatically proceed to merge any customizations you made to your definitions with our latest update, and install the resulting file! All this with just a single press of a button.

Automatic merging of your customizations (Professional and Enterprise Editions): Another very powerful feature of BrowserHawk is its ability to merge customizations you make to your browser definitions with updated versions of cyScape’s definitions as they are released. If you plan to customize your BDF, this feature will prove invaluable and will provide you with 100% maintenance-free browser definitions! And this is no ordinary merge feature. Our implementation is extremely powerful, allowing you to modify browser descriptions and even property names, yet still get updated definitions for those browsers and properties even if they are now under a different name!

Definition upload to production server: If you are developing your web site on a test or staging server (as is typical), BrowserHawk provides a seamless Upload operation for transferring your updated definition files from your local machine to your production web server. So whether your production web server is on your local LAN, or halfway around the world with your ISP, just click a single button and BrowserHawk does the rest (via a network file copy or FTP transfer). In fact, you can configure BrowserHawk so that with the press of one button, it will: download the latest definitions from cyScape, merge them with any customizations you’ve made, and transfer the newly resulting definitions up to your production web server!

Advanced browser definition data: BrowserHawk comes standard with cyScape latest advanced browser capability information. Our browser definition data is the most comprehensive available, accounting for just about all browsers and search agents that may likely visit your site. This browser definition data has been successfully tested to recognize thousands of unique browser user agents and variations thereof!

True property data types: BrowserHawk provides true data types of Integer, String, Double, Boolean, and Datetime for you to assign to the properties you create. As true data types, you no longer need to typecast the properties in your web scripts using functions like CInt() and CLong(). This results in cleaner, more compact code in your web scripts with less change for syntax or other related errors.

Remote definition file updates: BrowserHawk is designed from the ground up to make administration a breeze. In fact, its fully automated and you can't get much easier than that. But for folks who wish to manually update their definitions, there are various methods for doing so – whichever is the most convenient for you

Support for Allaire ColdFusion: BrowserHawk can be used in any web scripting language which supports ActiveX components, such as ASP and Allaire’s ColdFusion 3.01 and higher. ColdFusion uses who long ago only wished they could use browscap.ini can now enjoy the true power of a professional development tool for handling their browser recognition needs.

Automatic user agent logging: BrowserHawk provides flexible logging options for the automatic logging of user agents hitting your site. Choose from options to log all user agents, or just those user agents which do not have a browser definition in your data file. Then, import that log data back into the BrowserHawk Editor and use the Hit Tester to create a test a new browser definition for that entry!

Customizable preferences and options: BrowserHawk provides a great deal of flexibility to allow you to work how you are most comfortable. A suite of program preference and options is available for you to customize BrowserHawk to best suit how you like to work.

New and upcoming features: BrowserHawk is an innovative, revolutionary product loaded with features to provide the ultimate experience in designing your site around browser capabilities. We listen closely to our customer's feedback, and new features and enhancements are being added on an ongoing basis.