For some reason password fields are appearing as blank (or white) characters in IE8 for a site I\'m working on.
Both these screenshots have a long password entered
I had a similar problem - my text on all input[type='text'] elements was white. Moving the mouse cursor out of the modal div caused the text to appear. I suspected filter and transition CSS rules from Twitter Bootstrap to cause the problem - and it was it. I removed hide and fade classes from my modal window: and it works fine now. Give it a try if your modal is animated.