Dialogs not working as well as hoped (or at all)...

Dialogs not working as well as hoped (or at all)...


I've been fighting the dialogs for some time now. I was trying to use
1.5.3 and now trying to use 1.7 with no luck. Maybe somebody has a
better way of trying to resolve these issues for me.
Setup:
CF8/MachII framework. I am trying to use 1 div for all my dialog
containers. I dynamically load the content into the div and then open
it with custom options per the content displayed.
Example:
<script>
function downloadCert() {
        $("#dialog").load("index.cfm?event=downloadCert");
        $("#dialog").dialog({
            title: 'Download Certificate',
            bgiframe: true,
            height: 200,
            width: 400,
            modal: false,
            show: 'drop',
            hide: 'drop',
            draggable: false,
            resizable: false
        });
    }
</script>
<!---This is to be the pop-up dialog box--->
<div id="dialog" style="padding:0px; margin:0px;"></div>
1. For all browsers:
Since the upgrade I can open 1 dialog, close it, then if i try to open
it again i see the status bar loading something but nothing ever
appears. Happens whether the same function call or different.
2. For IE (both 6 and 7):
At one spot I am trying to load an iframe to an external application
into a dialog. Works perfect in IE, Safari, etc but all I see in IE
is the outside border of the dialog box (no title bar, close x in the
corner, content, etc). Nothing is inside that border, its transparent
to the page behind. I've tried the z-index for the iframe, div,
option in the dialog function etc and no help. Here is the function
that I am using to generate this dialog.
function generalSurvey() {
        $("#dialog").html("<iframe id='test' name='test' style='width:695px;
height:465px'></iframe>");
        $("#test").attr("src","http://samplesite.com/survey.cfm");
        $("#dialog").dialog({
            title: 'General Survey!',
            bgiframe: true,
            height: 525,
            width: 700,
            modal: false,
            show: 'drop',
            hide: 'drop',
            stack: 'true',
            closeOnEscape: true,
            draggable: false,
            resizable: false
        });
    }
Anyone have some ideas? I have tried a LOT of option combination with
no luck. I've also tried the base theme and a custom theme with no
luck.