although FF is way better and all, i believe the majority still uses IE so i want to get my page to work the same way in IE
Of course, and you should; no one said you shouldn't. The purpose in using a modern browser like FF or Opera is to make sure your standards compliant code works. So it makes sense to use the most standards compliant browsers to initially test in. Once that is set, then you can check IE for any problems caused by its quirks and bugs, although most of us check as we go along.
I am updating my dev computer right now and don't have my tools available but it looks like IE is having a problem with margins and padding; adding some where there shouldn't be any. Many times, we set all margins/padding to zero in css and then set each element as we like to avoid this issue. In addition, browsers sometims have different defaults.