I would recommend that you use the Form's OnResize event to handle all this.
Set the widths of panels 0, 1 and 3 according to the widths of their content. You then need to calculate the width of panel 2 based on the total width of the status bar and the width of the content of text in the panels 0, 1, 3 and 4.
Whenever the content of panels 0, 1, 3 or 4 change you need to call the Form's OnResize event.
If you are unable to get this to work post your code here and we'll take a look at it. Remember that Tek-Tips is not a free programming service!
Andrew
Hampshire, UK