Question

If you set the Visible property of a Windows Forms control to true, that property still returns false if any of the control’s parent windows are hidden. Is there a way to get the true, underlying visibility flag of the control in case the parent window is hidden?

Answer 1

Well, the regular implementation does check up the control stack, to ensure that all parents are visible. The only way I know to dodge this is to cheat with reflection, and ask for GetState(2), but that is brittle:

    // dodgy; not recommended     Panel query;     Form form = new Form     {         Controls = {             new Panel {                 Visible = false,                 Controls = {                     (query = new Panel {Visible = true})                 }             }         }     };     form.Show();      // this is the dodgy bit...     bool visible = (bool)typeof(Control)         .GetMethod('GetState', BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic)         .Invoke(query, new object[] { 2 });