Internet Explorer 5 and the MSXML Parser

By Steve Hoenisch

Last updated on May 25, 2002.

Note: The information in this article is likely out of date.

Because the example stylesheets in my XML tutorials conform to the W3C’s XSL Recommendation while the MSXML parser with which Internet Explorer 5 is natively equipped does not, you must have installed at least version 3 of the MSXML parser and be running it in replace mode for the code to work.

Running the parser in replace mode requires manual intervention, so if you don’t remember installing and activating it, you’re most likely running the old version of the parser, which does not conform to the XSL specification and takes a different XSL namespace.

You can obtain the latest version of the MSXML parser, which more closely conforms to the XSL specification and uses the correct namespace, from the XML section of the Microsoft Developer’s Network (MSDN) at www.Microsoft.com and install it in replace mode in a few minutes.

The W3C’s XSL Recommendation uses the following namespace:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

In contrast, Internet Explorer 5’s native XSL processor uses the following namespace, which does not conform to the XSL Recommendation:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl">

Michael Kay’s XSLT Programmer’s Reference, published by Wrox, covers XSLT in full and provides an excellent rundown of how to use XML and XSLT with Internet Explorer as well as an insightful discussion of the different versions of the MSXML parser and the two different namespaces needed for them.