MSXML with Internet Explorer
By default, Internet Explorer (IE) performs XSL transformation through MIME viewer. For IE8 and earlier versions, MSXML 3.0 provides the underlying MIME view and XSL processor. Starting with IE9, IE switches to its own MIME viewer and uses MSXML 6.0 as underlying XSL processor for applying style sheet templates.
Another scenario that invokes MSXML in IE is when applications calls responseXML from XMLHttpRequest Object, IE returns an MSXML 3.0 DOM object so that the application can use features in MSXML 3.0 to parse the result.
To use features of non-default versions of MSXML from within Internet Explorer you must use scripting, when an XML DOM object is instantiated using the appropriate version-specific ProgID.
For more information, see Initiate XSLT in a Script.