Layout managers greatly simplify the maintenance of your user interfaces by allowing you to position components relative to one another according to predefined logic. For example, if you change the size of one component, the position of the other components will be automatically adjusted.

By contrast, if you use absolute positioning (providing x,y coordinates for each component), then changing the size of one component generally will have a ripple effect and you will have to manually change the position of other components. LXZ does, however, support absolute positioning.

In addition, you can combine the two approaches. OpenLaszlo provides predefined layout managers (such as <simplelayout> in this example). You can also create your own layout managers from scratch, or by extending existing ones.