Thanks for the replies everyone..... STILL haveing problems though...
put my code here... http://pastebin.com/m25b8f3bd the highlighted line returns the correct number of results in FF etc. IE always returns 0. and here is a sample of my xml... http://pastebin.com/m454b2894 Validated it and its AOK! what is it that is stopping IE processing the xml as expected????? GRRRRRRRRRRRR (please make IE8 critical release and make people on OS < XP remove IE completely