Are we at cross purposes here?
"VFP controls are running too. You can set properties programmatically, and call applicable methods. But certain behaviors just don't apply at design time. For instance, would you want a control bound to a datasource that opens in the form.load to error because it gets refreshed after its init at design time? No. There are lots of things disabled at design time to make "design time" practical. Access/Assign is one of them."

But in VB I DO get an error if set a std data control database name (property) to a data base at design time and at a subsequent reload (into the designer) the data base is not present. I always have the option to make the data base connection and datasource connections in code if I don't want it to be live at design time. It is a visual design environment. I wonder if though, the distinction is that it is the ActiveX controls that you create in VB that are live (cf private controls).