Mike,

>My perspective is probably differetn than most folks here, ARS does Shrink Wrapped stuff, and someone that just does this (no matter how well), from what it sounds like will have no chance of passing either test on just those skills. I'm not complaining or anything, just saying, should this group of people be totally denied MCP status?

Hold on.

no chance
totally denied

I think that's probably a little extreme. I don't think anyone is saying that you will have no chance of passing DESKTOP if you don't know that ASP plain text.

To repeat what I said earlier: If you do Desktop development with VFP and have good general knowledge of VFP you should pass the Desktop test.

However, I think everyone should continue learning. You're taking a good approach in preparing for the future by experimenting with your own web site, learning about DHTML, etc. Even with shrink-wrapped software, you need to be prepared for providing your customers with embedded-browsers, publishing to web pages, querying over the web, and WEB SERVICES (accessing your software over HTTP, or your desktop software accessing data sources over HTTP).

Rick Strahl's white paper about using HTTP as your network is excellent reading for understanding the Web Services announcement.