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Rating: 
Summary: Another Stellar Tech Book from Spielman
Review: I'm a fan of fine technical authors, and put this author right up there. I read Sue's Struts book and thought it was the best one out there of the available Struts books. This JSTL book is at the top of the heap also. Everything I needed to know about working with the JSTL was concisly covered in detail, but easy to follow with great code and screen examples. I downloaded all of the code and literally just cut and pasted things into my project. The quick reference guide helps me everyday in my job as developer. My productivity has just gone up an order of magnitude on my job cause I can make use of all of the cool things Sue covers in this JSTL book. Hopefully she's working on another book soon, cause whatever it is I'm already looking forward to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very helpful. Not recommended at all.
Review: JSTL provides a set of common tag libraries for JSP programmers. This book explains the JSTL and it does it extremely well. In about 200 pages, the book covers what the JSTL is, what to use it for, how to use it, and gives plenty of examples. The start of the book covers the basics of tag libraries and explains why we need JSTL. Next, the basics of JSTL and the expression language are covered. The one small flaw in the book is that the expression language could have been covered in a bit more detail. The rest of the book covers each of the tags (actions) broken up into the separate libraries. The core, XML, internationalization and formatting, and SQL actions are each given their own chapters. The author doesn't just cover the tags but also provides enough background information to insure that you can understand how the tags are used. For example, in the XML chapter, the author starts by explaining the different technologies around XML and then shows how the XML actions can be used to simplify the task of using XML in your JSPs. The SQL chapter explains why you would never want to use the SQL actions before she discusses the actions themselves. The book ends with a "quick reference" section. Sue Spielman has a very easy writing style that makes reading her books a pleasure. Her book is short and complete, a very difficult combination to pull off.
Rating:
Summary: The best JSTL book on the market
Review: JSTL provides a set of common tag libraries for JSP programmers. This book explains the JSTL and it does it extremely well. In about 200 pages, the book covers what the JSTL is, what to use it for, how to use it, and gives plenty of examples. The start of the book covers the basics of tag libraries and explains why we need JSTL. Next, the basics of JSTL and the expression language are covered. The one small flaw in the book is that the expression language could have been covered in a bit more detail. The rest of the book covers each of the tags (actions) broken up into the separate libraries. The core, XML, internationalization and formatting, and SQL actions are each given their own chapters. The author doesn't just cover the tags but also provides enough background information to insure that you can understand how the tags are used. For example, in the XML chapter, the author starts by explaining the different technologies around XML and then shows how the XML actions can be used to simplify the task of using XML in your JSPs. The SQL chapter explains why you would never want to use the SQL actions before she discusses the actions themselves. The book ends with a "quick reference" section. Sue Spielman has a very easy writing style that makes reading her books a pleasure. Her book is short and complete, a very difficult combination to pull off.
Rating:
Summary: Shallow
Review: This book is potentially promising.
Short, concise, inexpensive. Can it be possible?
Not really.
The author skirts the major issues of getting started, forwarding readers to the 'easy installation instructions' on the Jakarta site, on all matters trivial and not so trivial.
The content itself is mediocre at best, written offhand and leaves you reading and re-reading every section to check whether you missed something when there really was very little there to begin with.
This book smells of a rush-to-publish and under-editting and under-testing. Steer clear.
Rating:
Summary: Not very helpful. Not recommended at all.
Review: This book just wasn't very helpful. Not much depth, sparse, sporadic. Everytime I ran into a JSTL issue/question on my project I ran to this book hoping that maybe this time it would provide answers. It never did. Very disappointing and frustrating. Look somewhere else.
Rating:
Summary: Get started with JSTL rapidly
Review: This might be one of the most effective IT book I have ever read. It's short but comprehensive. All four libraries are covered and covered quite well. The first few chapters provide an introduction to JSTL, including the reasons and a few brief examples. The chapter on the EL seemed to be the weakest chapter, but it was detailed enough to get a solid start with using it. Each library has a pretty good sized chapter with coverage of all of the tags and their most common attributes. The code samples covered what you are most likely to do with the tags, although I would have like to see some uncommon uses as well. The chapter on the SQL tags, the most controversial library, included her opinions on why you would use them. Overall, this book provides a quick source of information for learning JSTL. It will also make a great reference to have when you are writing your JSP pages.
Rating:
Summary: Get started with JSTL rapidly
Review: This might be one of the most effective IT book I have ever read. It's short but comprehensive. All four libraries are covered and covered quite well. The first few chapters provide an introduction to JSTL, including the reasons and a few brief examples. The chapter on the EL seemed to be the weakest chapter, but it was detailed enough to get a solid start with using it. Each library has a pretty good sized chapter with coverage of all of the tags and their most common attributes. The code samples covered what you are most likely to do with the tags, although I would have like to see some uncommon uses as well. The chapter on the SQL tags, the most controversial library, included her opinions on why you would use them. Overall, this book provides a quick source of information for learning JSTL. It will also make a great reference to have when you are writing your JSP pages.
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