ajax and I.E. 8

ajax and I.E. 8

Hi All,
 
    I'm working on an ajax slide-show. Can anyone tell me why the following code fails in I.E. 8? It works perfectly in Firefox and Safari. Is there a work-around for I.E.8?  Is my code incorrect?

    In I.E., the html elements are created correctly, but their values are left empty.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

//Jquery Document

$(document).ready(function() {

        autoUpdate();       


        $('span.notice').ajaxError(function() {
             $(this).text('Triggered ajaxError handler.');
        });


         
    function autoUpdate() {

        $.ajax({
            type: "GET",
            url: "php/get_image_set.php",
            success: function(xml) {

                var picture = $(xml).find('picture').text();
                var alt = $(xml).find('alt').text();
                var tagline = $(xml).find('tagline').text();
                var longtext = $(xml).find('longtext').text();

                $('#image_rotation > div').remove();

                $('<div><img src="'+picture+'" alt="'+alt+'" /><h3>'+tagline+'</h3><p>'+longtext+'</p></div>').appendTo('#image_rotation');   

                setTimeout(autoUpdate, 20000);
       
               

            }
        });   
    }       
});