Mike,
>I'd like to see the visual effects at design time because captions are involved. They all say something like "Label1" at design time, but, as you've pointed out (and as I have coded it), they work themselves out correctly at runtime. Its just that at design time, I'm working "blind".
>
>I guess what I'd really like to do is duplicate the way a VFP control like the command button can change its caption after I change the caption (and not say "Caption" until runtime) :) I'm having some success with a custom builder though.
Change the label captions inside the Control class to display something more useful than Label1 Label2. If it's an issue of like not having to remember that Label1 will be set to the value of Control.cItemX make Label1.Caption = "cItemX Here" in your class.
If it's a sizing issue, ie making sure the size of the control will fit the text then you can use a custom builder that would adjust the size of the instance based on the current values set on the property sheet.
maybe you can better define the "working blind" issue and we can come up with other suggestions.