There's already one thread here about this, but no real conclusion was ever arrived at for the problem of stacked panels. Where is the Tab Order Assignment dialog in Visual Studio 2012?
Here's what Visual Studio designer looks like when I select View - Tab Order:
There are 8 panels stacked on top of each other. At design time they are all marked Visible = False. At runtime one is marked Visible = True, according to the user's selection in the left panel. (These are Developer Express controls, by the way.)
Is there something I'm missing, or is it not possible to set tab order in this way?