The Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5 release includes several changes to the previous (Beta 2) release of XSL and XSL Patterns. Unless otherwise indicated, these changes should not affect style sheets that work with the beta release.
| Feature | Description |
| test attribute on <xsl:if> and <xsl:when> | These elements now accept the test attribute as described in the December 1998 XSL Working Draft. This attribute uses a "select pattern" instead of a "match pattern". |
| expr attribute on <xsl:if> and <xsl:when> | As part of scripting support, a script expression can be used to determine whether or not to execute a conditional template. |
| Data-typed sorting now possible | Sorting of strings has been augmented with the ability to honor data type attributes, and the ability to explicitly cast to numbers and dates. |
| Stricter handling of unrecognized elements | Unrecognized elements in the XSL namespace will generate errors. This might cause style sheets using elements not described in the December Working Draft or the beta release documentation to break instead of silently ignoring the unknown element. |
| Changed definition of text() method | Due to a name clash between the beta release and the December Working Draft, the functionality of the text() method has been dropped. Use the value() method in its place. The text() method now returns a collection of text and CDATA nodes. Style sheets that rely on the old definition might break. |
| Wildcards with prefixes in queries (prefix:*, @prefix:*) | The ability to find all elements or attributes that have the specified namespace has been added. |
| Added support for the Union operator ('|') | Returns the union of two queries, with duplicates removed. |
| Added support for the id() method | Returns the node with the specified ID. |
| Added support for the context() method | Returns the node that represents the context from which a query started, which offers a way to create the most common type of joins. |
| Added W3C-compliant syntax for Boolean operators | and, or, and not() can be used as described in the December Working Draft. |