Question

Currently I have most of my form’s controls disabled at launch because you cannot use them until a file is loaded. However, once the file is loaded the controls should become enabled.

I was using bindings but I don’t think they’re a good solution. For one, it is unnecessary complexity. Secondly, you cannot use bindings for everything. For example, MenuStrip items cannot have their Enabled property bound to the fileLoaded property. Only the entire menu can and I don’t want to disable the entire menu at launch, only certain menu operations that operate on the file.

I’m really just looking for a way to enable EVERYTHING. Most when asked that would answer with this:

foreach (Control c in Controls)
{
    c.Enabled = true;
}

However, that does not work for enabling MenuStrip items or controls within other controls (like a Panel or custom control). Therefore it would not enable scrollbars within containers.

I suppose I could use that line and manually enable everything else but I could have always just manually enabled everything. I’m looking for a way to automatically enable everything.

Answer 1

Recursion

private void enableControls(Control.ControlCollection Controls)
{
    foreach (Control c in Controls)
    {
        c.Enabled = true;
        if (c is MenuStrip)
        {
           foreach(var item in ((MenuStrip)c).Items)
           { 
              item.Enabled = true;
           }
        }
        if (c.ControlCollection.Count > 0)
            enableControls(c.Controls);

    }
}

Edit

Should have been checking the control Collection count instead of HasControls Which is Webcontrols