M. David Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:26:08 -0600, Manfred Staudinger 
<manfred.staudinger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



No. Both IE 6 and IE 7 use MSXML3.

They do?  UGGGLLYYY!!!  I guess it's because I have physically 
installed MSXML 6 that I had it there by default...



Hmmm... That bites!




This is not entirely correct. It depends on what operating system you 
have, or it depends on the user settings. By default, with Vista and 
higher, any IE will use MSXML 6.0. Win2k, WinXP and Win2k3 by default 
use MSXML 3.0, unless MS Office 2003 is installed, in which case IE6 
defaults to MSXML 5.0. But, surprisingly, IE7 will default to MSXML 3.0 
(MS considers 3.0 a more stable and secure release, and 6.0 is its 
successor, not 4.0 or 5.0), unless MSXML 6.0 is available.



MS wants to put MXSML in some future service pack for 2k, XP and 2k3, 
which may change matters (and probably will make matters even worse).



If a user downloads MSXML 6.0 by hand, it will become the preferred 
version for either IE6 or IE7.



When you try to instantiate an MSXML object without specifying its 
version number, it will NOT instantiate the latest version, instead, it 
will ALWAYS instantiate an MSXML 3.0 object:



  new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0')



and



  new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.DOMDocument)



are both equal on any system. So, defaults or not, you must always 
specify the 6.0 version explicitly to use it.



Does this all sound awfully confusing? Read on at this good and detailed 
story about the versions and how best to instantiate them 
http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2006/10/23/using-the-right-version-of-msxml-in-internet-explorer.aspx 
and you will be enthralled ;)



Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma