TabIndex on WebUI Panels

[humour]

I noticed that when I place a UserControl on a webform
like so:

<uc1:uCalendar ID="UCalendarIncidentDate" runat="server" />

The TabIndex property isn't available? Why?

To get around this problem I have contained the uCalendar control - which is really 3 controls, a TextBox,Button, and the MS Calendar) I contain the UC in a panel (because it does have a tabindex) like so:

<aspanel ID="PanelIncidentDate" runat="server" Height="152px" Style="z-index: 138; left: 22px;
position: absolute; top: 238px" Width="208px" TabIndex="73" >
<uc1:uCalendar="UCalendarIncidentDate"runat="server" />
</aspanel>

On the UC I have public methods to set the TABINDEX on the 3 controls it houses. However I am not getting the Tab Order behaviour I expect.

example:

Textbox1(Tabindex 10)

PanelA.ucA(Tabindex 20)
uca.Textbox(22)
uca.Calendar(23)
uca.Button(24)

TextBox2

PanelB.ucB(TabIndex 30)
ucb.Textbox(32)
ucb.Calendar(33)
ucb.Button(34)

The Tab Behaviour I actually observe is as follows:

Textbox1 - PanelA, PanelB, TextBox2

What I want is
TextBox1 - uca.Textbox - uca.Calendar uca.Button
then
TextBox2 - ucb.Textbox - ucb.Calendar ucb.Button

My Questions:

a) How Can I achieve an Explicit Tab order on a form that uses the same User Control iterated 4 times.

a.2) Is there a way to get User Controls and their sub controls to have A TABIndex, Z-Order and Left, Top attributes that normal server controls have??

b) Is there something I should use instead of a Panel? Maybe a Div tag? If so am I better of with a server DIV control or an HTML control - maybe a table?

c) I use GridLayout because I want to Explicitly set and organize my controls in a predictable way and because I prefer the way my Calendar which appears and dissapears as a result of choosing a date Overlays the controls underneath it (Z-Order). In FlowLayout the suddenly appearing Calendar Control PUSHES controls underneath it - resulting in a jerky screen motion.

d) Can someone give me a good reason (other than browser unpredictability - which is not my issue as to why I should switch to Flow-View? I am not against it I just had a hard time getting my controls organized and having the behaviours I wanted in Flow-View.

Sorry for all the questions, hopefully someone or many people can take a stab at them.

Kindest Regards,