We need to know more about how you're managing these panes. It sounds like you may be using FRAME or IFRAME, and
JSF doesn't get along with them very well. In JSF2, the easiest way to do pages like yours is to use the tiling capabilities of JSF Facelets.
Actually, that's the easiest way in JSF1 as well, but you have to provide your own Facelets libraries in JSF1. They're built into JSF2.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.