It seems the designer has states that it gets into, making it hard to check
for components or even determine if you are in design mode. The best
suggestion to check for Design mode I have heard here so far is to use the
License Manager check in the constructor (we noted this does not always work
if you use it later in your code so the best thing to do is use it and set
your own flag right then and there).

It seems depending on when you use GetReferenceService can change the
results of what you get (It calls back into CanExtend)... sometimes it only
will retrieve controls and other times components. Is there some sequence
diagram someone has to show when particular methods are called on the
component in design mode and at what points things are useable?

For example is there a specific time method or event after all properties
are set I can guarantee that GetReference from the GetReference service will
return valid information. I've had times where I had a component I could see
in the form, and when I asked the reference service for the list of that type
of components it returned a zero length array or a null reference if checking
the individual one.