How do I paint in my mdi container, a logo, for example?

You should not try listening to your MDI container Form’s Paint event, instead listen to the Paint event of the MDIClient control that is a child of the mdi container form. This article provides you a detailed example: Painting in the MDI Client Area

How can I tell my form is being used in design time and not runtime

Check the the property Form.DesignMode. But, note that when in Visual Inheritance mode (designing a derived form), your Control’s DesignMode property will be true when the base form’s constructor gets executed in the design-time. To workaround this, you could check if the app in which your control is running is not devenv.exe, as follows: string exePath = Application.ExecutablePath; exePath = exePath.ToLower(); if(Application.ExecutablePath.ToLower().IndexOf(‘devenv.exe’) > -1) { // Then you are running in vs.net. }

How do I launch IE or any other process from code?

You can do so using the System.Diagnostics.Process.Start method as follows: // Just specifying the document name will open the appropriate app based on system settings. Process.Start(‘Http://msdn.microsoft.com’) // Open a word document in Word. Process.Start(‘AWordDocument.doc’) // Or open the app directly: Process.Start()