I have a hidden div which is faded in using jquery when the user clicks a button. There is flash movie that is loaded into the div and will show and play in all major browsers except IE.
If the div is not hidden the flash will load and play fine.
Can anyone explain to me the problem?
I'm not sure this will work, but since you are using JQuery it will be easy to test - try starting with the div off of the screen by settings its top and left to 0 and -2000px. Then when you want to show it, move it back to where it should be. To move it back, you might be able to set its top and left to '' empty quotes so it will go back to default, or set the div's left and top to 0 and append to a placeholder div so it shows where you want it.
First this that comes to mind is setting wmode on the flash element to "transparent".