Michael,

>What are the usual practices with VFP ?

To subclass them all before you use them.

Another reason not yet mentioned is so that you can fix the things that are "wrong" with the VFP baseclasses. For example making Labels Autosize = .t. and BackStyle transparent, fixing the Textbox so the backspace key will not exit the field and take you to the prior control and wiping out it's content.