More IE7 max-width oddity: max-width inside table

[Markus]

Hello

I encountered a very annoying behaviour of IE7 with max-width on
elements inside a table cell - it seems to be related to the max-width
bugs on list items and floated elements (discussed here in March 07).

<table>
<tr>
<td style="backgrou nd:red">
<p style="max-width:20em">Hi there Some text some text some text
some text some text some text some text some text some text</p>
</td>
<td style="backgrou nd:yellow">
<p>hi there</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Viewing this table in IE7, the text in the max-width paragraph will
correctly be wrapped at 20 em, but the containing table cell still
reserves the horizontal space that would be needed to display the
unwrapped paragraph, until the table expands to the whole viewport width.

Applying the maximum width to the containing element does not work here,
as IE7 (and Safari, AFAIK) does not recognize max-width on table-cells.

Is there any other known solution or workaround?

Thanks for any hint!
Markus