One of the most frustrating things about dealing with IE compatibility mode is how it handles table layouts. In my recent experience, it seems to automatically stretch them out to take up more room than you’d expect. It seems to generally disregard padding, spacing, and column width CSS settings (unless the column width is greater than the amount of space the browser wants to provide for a column).
Even worse, it doesn’t always space the columns evenly. In a recent application, cells with consistent content were sized differently in compatibility mode, so the content of some cells would wrap and others wouldn’t — even though there would have been plenty of space for all of the data if the columns had been spaced evenly.
Since the pattern seems to be that it will stretch tables out to the full available width, the quick workaround to improve table layouts in compatibility mode is to put a container around the table (such as a div) and use CSS to fix the width of that container. This doesn’t cause it to space the columns perfectly, but it can be very handy in limiting the size of the table as needed.
