I wonder why they have removed sortable tables. Not a hard thing to re-add if you need it, but why the hassle? I used them a lot as a designer as it is one of the most appreciated things for my clients from the desktop-application world who expect it as a given and disappointed when it's not available.
In the Google Group, Mark Otto mentioned that he didn't want to have it as a dependency (it was the only 3rd party plugin) and raised a concern with it having its own themes.
That explains a lot. It also breaks if any of the columns get too narrow. Rather than dropping the effort to further narrow it, it crushes the text of the label upwards so you are left with a set of vertically extended labels where there is ample space.
