IE 8, Fixed Width aligned to right rather than center

Subscribing and working on a solution

I have a fix which does not address the core issue (not sure which bug it is) but is does fix it for me:
add conditional css for ie8 in the file page.tpl.php with:

 <!--[if IE 8]>
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/ie8.css"/>
  <![endif]-->

add ie8.css to ad_novum theme dir with the following content:

#wrapper {
   margin:0 auto; /* restore the original value */
}
#footer {
  padding-left:40px;
  width:980px;
}