A friend just started experimenting with forms - no experience in this area - and found some strange behavior. Since I didn't understand what was going on, he sent me the form. Upon inspection, it turned out that the behavior was due to the combination of Form.AutoCenter = .T., combined with a Form.Height and Form.Width close to 10,000 pixels each.
Now it became more or less clear to me why no form elements were visible until the form was maximized.
What I don't understand is, how can someone without any experience with forms accidentally select such a size? I can imagine no combination of maximizing, resizing, etc., that will produce this result!
Oh, apparently my friend produced this with the Spanish translation of the IDE - the Web site carries a warning not to use it in production environments. I thought this might cause some of this weird behavior. On my own machine, I only have the English version.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)