In this month's [June] of FoxTalk, Doug Hennig mentions in his article some pro's and con's of PRG -vs- VCX based classes. The big advantage of a PRG based class is it is very difficult to corrupt with respect to the corruptibility of a table [and memo field] based VCX.

One of the disadvantages of the PRG based class is the PEM sheet is not available. However, you can make intellisense available to at least get your properties setup. For example:

*create a test.prg file
DEFINE CLASS txtBox as TextBox

   LOCAL tb as textbox  && activates IS. Remove this when done
   tb.BackStyle = 0
   tb.BorderStyle = 1
   tb.Comment = 'custom textbox'
   tb.FontBold = .T.

   procedure Init  && beyond this point TB. no longer triggers IS.

Once you get what you need out of IS, just cleanup your code to remove what is no longer needed [e.g., tb. and LOCAL tb as textbox].