Is there any plan to classes inheriting from the Form class to be marked as MustInherit?

It's a bit of a nuisance that we can't do this, it'd be a really useful thing because then we can railroad other team members to be consistant in where they put code.  The designer kicks off at the moment when you try.

Unfortunately not - supporting this would require a complete re-architecture of the designer.  When you design something in the designer, it instantiates the base class (e.g. the designer for 'form1' has created a System.Windows.Forms.Form), so if the base class is MustInherit/Abstract, it can't do this. 

Unfortunately not - supporting this would require a complete re-architecture of the designer.  When you design something in the designer, it instantiates the base class (e.g. the designer for 'form1' has created a System.Windows.Forms.Form), so if the base class is MustInherit/Abstract, it can't do this. 

Ok, thanks for that Shawn.  If you ever redesign the designer, keep it in mind :)