Rating: 
Summary: Kind of Dissapointing
Review: Being that I usually trust O'Reilly to deliver quality material, I bought this book without even skimming through it at the bookstore. I have to admit, though, after reading it through I'm less than satisified. The first half of the book is aimed at web designers, so the author writes like he's walking on eggshells...trying really hard not to go into details as to confuse a non-developer. Very frustrating. Many topics just reference the 2nd half. Not only that, but much of the book is based on his own custom tags. This is like assuming developers are only going to be using his tag libraries. Granted, the book does have its strong points. His descriptions and code examples are pretty solid and he keeps things simple and to the point. I think this book could have been better if he didn't try and write the book from two different perspectives. I understand what he's trying to accomplish, but it just doesn't work for me. O'Reilly books work very well as a reference, but they tend to lag behind in their ability to teach. Two stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Clear & Concise
Review: Bergens did an amazing job of flowing the information for JSP for novice and advanced users. I would have liked a little more info on how to implement with Struts, but that's OK there are other books for that, and that's not what the purpose of this book is in the first place. Hans does a very good job of showing you how you can start with JSP and improve your implementation by integrating with other parts of the java language and jsp standards available to you like tags, servlets, ejb etc... I like the start small, finish big approach eith constant refactoring of the ideas explained in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Clear & Concise
Review: Bergens did an amazing job of flowing the information for JSP for novice and advanced users. I would have liked a little more info on how to implement with Struts, but that's OK there are other books for that, and that's not what the purpose of this book is in the first place. Hans does a very good job of showing you how you can start with JSP and improve your implementation by integrating with other parts of the java language and jsp standards available to you like tags, servlets, ejb etc... I like the start small, finish big approach eith constant refactoring of the ideas explained in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: not for Java programmers
Review: Excellent writing style. BUT, I concur with another reviewer - too many details are left out of the first few chapters and there is an over-reliance on the O'Reilly tag library. I like books that do not require me to download sample code and sit in front of a PC to understand. The writing should be self-contained. Overall - it reads quite well. But my frustration peaked after chapter 8.
Rating: 
Summary: Pick a different book
Review: First things first, I am commenting on the FIRST EDITION. Sadly, the author has chosen to use tags, custom tags in most of the examples. Tags should have been described / explained in a separate chapter, as an optional feature of JSP pages. All I wanted was a simple book to use for quick reference while developing JSP pages. While much of what most developers may want to find is probably in this book, the tags make finding what you want a bit more difficult.
To be fair... there are some very good explanations on server side architectural models. (e.g. JSP coupled with "controller" servlets, database persistence objects and biz objects) for example running under Tomcat.
Anyhow, unless you want to wade through custom tags, buy a different book.
Rating:
Summary: Good beginning, but then he lost me
Review: He gets you up and running very quickly and builds a lot of excitement for JSP, but then starts using his own tag libraries for everything, which make it harder and harder to follow his examples. His intentions are good, since he is trying to teach good architecture, but he is trying to cover too much ground in too short a book. Maybe the architecture of his book, where he tries to address both, web designers and developers, is just flawed. I don't regret buying the book, just to get me started, but since I have been up and running with JSP I find myself using "Core Servlets and Java Server Pages" (ISBN: 0130893404) and "Web Development with Java Server Pages" (ISBN: 1884777996) almost exclusively. Those two books should be everything you need to get serious about server-side Java development. I wrote a rave review earlier, so I rate it at 1 star here to average to what I think it deserves, 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Title From a Usually Great Publisher
Review: How disappointing. This usually great publisher seems to be relying on its name alone to sell books these days. This book doesn't yield anything not already coverd in the JSP books that are already out there, despite the lenghth of time between them.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect book for java programmers starting to write JSP's
Review: I am a java programmer who needed to learn JSP's quickly and in a way that would allow me to deploy enterprise ready applications. Bergsten's book perfectly fit my needs. The beginning of the book offers a great quick intro to the toys and tools we get to play with and then moves on to more complex discussions including beans, authentication, architecture(MVC), database,custom actions, etc.It is a well rounded and well architected book. Bergsten also is an author who stands by his product. I have owned the book for almost a month now and whenever I need clarification on some subject matter in the book, if I email him, he emails me right back within a day and with very detailed responses. You try getting that kind of service from Microsoft. HA! And Hans knows his stuff! I have also taken Sun's JSP training. Save yourself $495.00 Bergsten's book is better. Do yourself a favor, don't keep looking; this is a killer JSP book.
Rating:
Summary: This book is too cheap !!!
Review: I cannot understand why some people did not like this book. It is definetly those kind of books that make O'Reilly one of the most respectful tech editors. I also have Core Servlets and JSP, which is awful compared to this one. The Core book just say 'do that to get that'. It does not say why, when, the advantages, drawbacks, alternatives, etc. It is just a reference book, it does not teach you anything useful, just the JSP syntax, so you may think that you know JSP, but you actually don't. I had this feeling because I first read the Core book. But then when I read the O'Reilly one I realized that I did not know anything about JSP. I was ashamed of thinking I once knew it. To conclude: If you want to be a JSP specialist buy the O'Reilly's book. If you want to know the syntax of JSP by the Core one.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many beans! other wise the best
Review: I could not argue that this book has been a great help and the examples are very practical indeed. Many mistery unfold and I could finally get the Internationalize things to work. However, in order to make things easy, you'll have to use the Beans that the author have created for you! Which means you may not fully understand what's behind the scene. I understand that using Beans keeps your code nice and tidy and make good practice. But when you have to understand the codes other people have done you'll also have to understand their Beans too!
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