IE8 - Compatibility Mode Spreads Page Out

I have a web page that i have written in mainly HTML. When I run my website from visual studio 2008 the page looks fine. The problem is when I publish it IE8's compatibility mode spreads the page out.

BEfore my page used to be spread out because I had alot of hidden cells in tables that had cell spacing and padding. But I fixed all of that. And it looks great when I turn compatibility mode off.

I seem to think it's because I have some labels that ar开发者_如何学编程e hidden that are still taking up space but not being shown. I am not sure though.

Are there any common solutions to this?

The best solution is to prevent compatibility mode by forcing IE8 to stick to IE8 mode:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />

You'll never need to worry about the disaster that is IE7-compatibility mode again.