Comment 31 for bug 36189

From what I can judge the problem is not how the panel behaves when it is resized, but how it behaves when adding applets to the panel, i.e. practically always choosing to store the position as absolute from left, instead of from right. In fact, once I corrected all the settings manually in gconf, all applets retain their correct positions no matter how often I change resolution, i.e. I would suggest gnome does not really change any settings in the panel.

What would have to be done is, when adding an applet, make the panel detect if the new applet touches an existing stack of applets that is aligned to the left / right, and store the positioning of the new applet consequently: either stick right enabled or disabled, and not using full-width pixel positions, but rather storing à la index.