I have been struggling with this problem since a while now. I have a border layout in my application. And in the North panel I have a logo at the left (fixed width). To the right of the logo in the empty space I want to insert panels at runtime. The contents of the panels are added and removed at runtime too, so I need them to be autowidth. I have tried column layout but it doesn't work in IE. Other layouts don't seem to have the right features or may be I am overlooking something. Looking for a better approach.