[jQuery] Cycle: cleartype and slide captions solution no longer working with 2.52

[rubycat]

(Please excuse my newness...I'm not sure if I need to do anything
special to post code, etc.)

What have I done wrong? My original need was to fix the IE7 cleartype
bug on captions that I fade in used within a Cycle slideshow. It
seemed that the built-in cleartype fix IN Cycle is only for text used
in the "slide" part. So, I call another js function from a separate
file if the browser is IE7 and everything was working just peachy
until trying it with the latest version of Cycle [Version: 2.52 (21-
FEB-2009)]. Here's the separate function in its entirety:

jQuery.fn.fadeIn = function(speed, callback) {
return this.animate({opacity: 'show'}, speed, function() {
if (!jQuery.support.opacity)
 this.style.removeAttribute('filter');
if (jQuery.isFunction(callback))
callback();
});
};

jQuery.fn.fadeOut = function(speed, callback) {
return this.animate({opacity: 'hide'}, speed, function() {
if (!jQuery.support.opacity)
this.style.removeAttribute('filter');
if (jQuery.isFunction(callback))
callback();
});
};

jQuery.fn.fadeTo = function(speed,to,callback) {
return this.animate({opacity: to}, speed, function() {
if (to == 1 && !jQuery.support.opacity)
this.style.removeAttribute('filter');
if (jQuery.isFunction(callback))
callback();
});
};

The relevant part from my jquery call for Cycle is as follows:

    $('#slideshow').cycle({
        fx:     'shuffle',
        speed:  500,
        timeout: 4000,
        next: '#slideshow, #next',
        prev: '#prev',
        before: function() { $('#slideshow span').css
('display','none');},
        after: function() { $('span', this).fadeIn("slow");}
    });

Can someone lend some assistance to this js dummy?