Someone please confirm or correct my understanding of LayoutPanels

Question

I'm using multiple layoutpanels on each page in a series of pages. I have found the pages look best if everything is fixed (target resolution 800 x 600) but I want the page to be centered in the screen.
The layout panel dropped onto the page centers properly, behavior is grid.
Objects inside the grid are positioned in absolute mode because any other method, they wind up in unexpected places.
Some styles are a styleclass from the stylesheet, some are hard coded into the object's JSP because a style sheet class with the exact same CSS directives does not work at all. (frustrating to say the least !)
When I Preview in Browser from JSC2_1, everthing looks great. When I view in SunAppServer or Tomcat, any object referenced as absolute is positioned absolutely from the left side of the screen.
Is this your experience - am I missing something - or can you make suggestions ?
Thanks in advance,
Jim

Answer 1

Sun sent me a very nice automated email asking if my question had been answered. I figured it out, but have been too busy to post back.
My observations of the behavior of layout panels is:
The layout panel behaves according to the CSS you have entered into Style or what's in you StyleClass.
The components render in browser preview relative to the layout panel (usually, that is)
When it renders from the JSP server (my examples are Tomcat and SunAppServer), the components (but not the layout panel) render according to the CSS directives of the top container.
The following example is from my experience, your mileage may vary
For example :
Drop a layout panel onto the form, give it borders and a background image, and other CSS style directives like: top: 0px; left: 50%; width: 760px; position: absolute; margin-left: -380px
It should display in the center of the screen, no matter what the end user's resolution
Now drop objects onto the form with position: absolute and values for top/left/width, etc to position them exactly (dragging the object will achieve the same result);
Preview in browser, everything looks as it should
Run the app and each object renders from top/left of the screen (argh !) but the layout panel is where it should be.
Change the top level container CSS directives. In this case it is form1, where by default, everything had been <not set>.
Modify the CSS style for form1 so its positional direcitves at least include: top: somevalue_px; left: 50%; margin-left: -380px
I have found the layout in visual edit mode may look funny, ( I have some pages where it looks very funny) but it previews generally the same in browser preview and running on both SAS and Tomcat. Differences I have found to be the result between IE and Mozilla (my two test browsers).
Hope this helps some. You're welcome to send me a plunger if you disagree !
JH