You are right, once I changed container panel's layout to "fit", the grid height no longer affected by "items per page".

Now the grid has a fixed size, even with the "fit" layout. In order to auto resize the grid with the containing panel, I changed the onRezise handler as follows but it does not seem to make any difference. any ideas why?

onResize: function() {
var kendoGrid = this.getKendoGrid();
kendoGrid.height = this.height;
kendoGrid.width = this.width;
this.refreshKendo();
},

Thanks for the pointers for custom components, and I agree with you on the data source issue.