The full .Net framework has an inherited UserControl but this option isn’t offered by Visual Studio when creating a new control in a Compact Framework project.
Manually changing the ancestor class of a user control to another user control results in an exception being thrown by the designer when subsequently trying to open it.
Anyone know if user control inheritance is possible?
I have some notes on CF UserControls in this blog entry. The short of it is “Unless you plan to be a control vendor don’t bother wasting your time even trying to get designer support working.”