Hi,
Tankyou for the answer but my point is very simple: Ok it can expand but docked and I need to float on mobile devices. I can simulate doing something like this:
var west = $('#mylayout'). layout ('panel', 'west');
var b = west.panel('options'). find('.panel body');
b.trigger ('click');
It works the way I want it (but I don't really know if it's safe!), but there's another weird effect: the center region is scrolled all the way to the right :-).