What's the common ancestor of visual elements in C#?

Question

I have a hard time believing that there isn't an answer here but it certainly looks like it doesn't exist.

I am trying to iterate over everything on the form and set the visible and enabled properties based on the tag value. I find the reek of an absolutely duplicated routine between the routine iterating the controls and the routine iterating the menus--while both classes have visible, enabled and tag properties they appear to be separate items.

As far as I can tell the tree only converges at Component--but this lacks the visual properties.

Answer 1

That's correct, there is no common ancestor. The ToolStripMenuItem class is derived from ToolStripItem, the base class for many derived classes that are parts of a MenuStrip or a ToolStrip. They are special because they are not derived from Control. They are window-less controls, they don't have a Handle property. Which is the key property of the Control base class.

This is an optimization, the Control derived classes are expensive. They need a native Windows window, a heavy operating system object with lots of overhead. Really evident when you put, say, 50 buttons on a form. You can see it paint.

Duplicating this logic is thus normal. Using the Tag property to control state isn't.