Good point, Ger, Indeed, a given UI of this type (sub-panels in a Panel) is may be designed to allow any number of sub-panels to be expanded, or collapsed,or "accordion style," allow only one sub-panel to be open at-a-time: that may mean you need to deal explicitly with visibility, assuming you have the Panel's 'AutoScroll property set to 'true, and there are sub-panels in the Panel's ControlCollection which are scrolled out of view. I assume you add these controls to your sub-panels at run-time because: either you don't know the number of rows until run-time, or, the end-user may set a parameter that affects number of rows to be rendered into sub-panels on Load, or the user "on-the-fly" changes the number of rows they want rendered into sub-panels (via selection or query or whatever). Personally, I'm a "true believer," in this situation, in creating a UserControl that can be multiply instantiated, that contains all sub-elements: such as the ones you described: image,label, command button, and then keeping a Collection of those back on the "ranch" (some "MainForm") in a form of a Generic Dictionary, which will vary depending on the scenario, but may be like: Dictionary<subPanel, bool>, where the Boolean might indicate if its "open," or "collapsed." ... edit ... Assuming a scrollable outer container Panel: if the user does some selection activity ... outside the container Panel ... that will then determine that sub-panel#x needs to be visible, you may have to adjust the scroll-position in your code, if the targeted sub-panel is currently scrolled out-of-view: this is a reason why I like using a generic collection here: to get away from code like
panel2.ScrollControlIntoView(panel2.Controls[0]);
... end edit ... But, that's just another recipe from Mama's Kitchen, and I am not questioning the way you are doing things now: just extending your comment a bit. "Each scenario may require a different UI solution that is optimal" is such a cliche, that I won't even mention it here :) best, Bill
"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." Niels Bohr