Need help debugging page in IE8

Question

The site in question works great on every browser except IE8. There is a div underneath the blue logo on the left hand side of the page that fades in with some copy. It is driven by a simple embedded script. However, I cannot figure out why it is not working in IE8. It just will not show up. I have tried multiple things and at this point I dont care if the fade in works, I just want the side text to appear on the left hand side of the page underneath the logo without having to reformat the page. I tried removing the javascript altogether and and removing the "Display: none" funtion from each div so they would be visible, but they are still not showing up. What gives?
The div that it being called by the javascript code is #wrapper_content_home, by which it contains three other divs within it that fade-in when the script is fired (#pageTitle, #solidDivider, #sideContent).
I am currently using VirtualBox to test and have it configured to Windows XP 32 bit using IE8.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong with my code or what I need to do to fix this issue? Could it be a Doctype declaration issue? At this point, I have no idea. Thanks in advance for any help with this!
Here is a link to the page in question: http://fountainplace.com/team/
Here is a JS Fiddle I set up for debugging (view my code): http://jsfiddle.net/FAzaD/2/

Answer 1

>I was taking a Dreamweaver class at the Denver Art
Institute, that was worthless
Yes, those classes usually are worthless because they focus
on using the tool without giving you the proper foundation for
understanding and managing html and css. Unfortunately, all of the
example sites you gave you AP Divs (layers) as a primary layout
method, which is a terrible approach. AP Divs should be used rarely
if ever, and only when you understand how they work. When the
visitors font is sized differently than you expected, the site
falls apart. The correct approach is to learn web
design/development outside of the context of a specific
application.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/
is a good place to start for a basic understanding of html and css.
And some basic layout techniques can be found here:
http://apptools.com/examples/pagelayout101.php