wow I got it working in 10 minutes shanx! thanks for that page! btw, is your page not on a search engine? i swear i searched the whole yahoo/dmoz for xslt-and-php info!
thanks/erick
ps - bill, thanks for that suggestion too but i use ie 5.5 already so i think i should be ok? well, some xslt examples from shanx site are already working but thanks! i did not think it would be so easy