What do you exactly mean. I really couldn't understand the problem well. I could not make assumption too

i want to pick all the image files in a given dir path at clientside and display it on my webpag ..

i cant access those files on server side if i say <img src = "c:\a.jpg"/> it will search on server. I dont want that. i m looking for a javascript (as js runs on client machine) which will parse the xml (i hav xml containing the path of local image files) and get the path and display the image by retriving the file (from the given path) on local machine i.e. is on client side

All browsers come with a built in XML parser which can be used to load XML files which can then be accessed using DOM. Read this for reading local XML files.

Whether or not a browser allows a page to reference files on a user's computer in any way is dependant on the browser and perhaps security settings; although, it's certainly been possible in previous IE versions to display images that are stored on a user's PC via a webpage, regardless of the host of the webpage. For that user only of course...

This works for me in IE6:
But not in Opera or Firefox.. Dunno about IE7. Opera and Firefox only allow this when the host is the localhost - in other words; when the page referencing the image is also on the user's PC.

Accessing resources on the users computer doesn't mandate the use of absolute pathing. We can still use relative paths and at the same time access the images on the users computer provided the hierarchy / folder structure is well defined and considering the path / folder where our HTML resides as the root.

If the entire site/page is offline, yes... I'm not 100% sure on the OPs requirements, but 'web page' implies a page on the web; and if the page really is hosted on the web ( i.e. on a host that cannot be assumed to be the localhost ); then the obvious way to access anything on a given user's machine from that webpage is using an absolute path starting with 'file://' as per that example ( and to my knowledge this only works with < IE6[7??], and only with images ).. If the site/page that requests the image is also on the localhost, then no problem, it will work in any browser: use relative, absolute, or root-relative paths, whatever you prefer.

But I don't think that's the case, read the posts, the OP specifically says 'i cant access those files on server side if i say <img src = "c:\a.jpg"/> it will search on server.' Forcing the browser to use the file:// protocol instead http:// protocol in theory will allow the browser to access files on the user's own filesystem; in practice it wont work reliably - not all browsers will allow it in all circumstances - because it's dangerous. BUT it will always work, if the page and the image are sourced from the same host... e.g. if the .html file is saved on the same computer as the .gif/.jpg/etc files.