In many enterprise applications there is the need that, regardless on which control you have the focus, that you can hit the 'Enter' and/or 'Esc' key to perform a default action. This behaviour is also common to web applications. On the Form control you find properties like AcceptButton and CancelButton, whereas the UserControl doesn't have these properties. The code below contains an AcceptButton and CancelButton that allows you to define a default action when the Enter or Esc key is pressed respesctively.

public class UserControlEx : System.Windows.Forms.UserControl
{    
    private Button _acceptButton;
    private Button _cancelButton;

    public event EventHandler<EventArgs> AcceptEvent;
    public event EventHandler<EventArgs> CancelEvent;

    [Browsable(true)]
    public Button AcceptButton
    {
        get { return _acceptButton; }
        set { _acceptButton = value; }
    }

    [Browsable(true)]
    public Button CancelButton
    {
        get { return _cancelButton; }
        set { _cancelButton = value; }
    }

    protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData)
    {
        if (msg.WParam.ToInt32() == (int)Keys.Enter)
        {
            OnAcceptEvent(EventArgs.Empty);

            if (_acceptButton != null)
                _acceptButton.PerformClick();
        }

        if (msg.WParam.ToInt32() == (int)Keys.Escape)
        {
            OnCancelEvent(EventArgs.Empty);

            if (_cancelButton != null)
                _cancelButton.PerformClick();
        }

        return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
    }

    protected virtual void OnAcceptEvent(EventArgs args)
    {
        if (AcceptEvent != null)
            AcceptEvent(this, args);
    }

    protected virtual void OnCancelEvent(EventArgs args)
    {
        if (CancelEvent != null)
            CancelEvent(this, args);
    }
}