>Apparently I was wrong. The gray area remains before/after collapse.

Ok, thanks, that would have been a very difficult one to troubleshooting. I started to wonder: "How did he get that?" :)

>If you are able to determine each 10s panel's proper height, then can the entire gray column be set to auto-fit thereby shrinking after a collapse?

Is this also related to the first point. Or, there is still something I need to look at?