Rating: 
Summary: The JSP BIBLE has arrived
Review: This is hands down the best introduction to JSP coding. I've been through at least a dozen other publishers and no other book has been so clear and concise with all the relevant issues that plague serious JSP developers today. Usually a book will contain sections that aren't useful or don't deal with real life issues facing corporate programmers. This book handles everything from the most basic example to offering many perspectives of other programming theories. Having read the entire book, I'd have to say this book sets itself aside as THE best rendition of everything that makes for a great technical publication. Many companies demand that you use best of breed coding methods before they will hire you on as a JSP developer. They want database connection pools, security considerations, localization of content, and they will typically force you to work with a number of different development environments and back-end servers. This book not only gives you the big picture, but it comes with WORKING EXAMPLES! I was able to use this book to learn how to install TOMCAT (the best JSP development environment) and watch the EXACT code in the book function flawlessly. I dare say having bought over 50 technical books in the last 10 years, this is an industry first. And the author examples every single line of code so you never get lost or confused about what is happening. If you're asking yourself if you should buy this book, and you have a project requiring JSP knowledge and you've done either no or very little JSP coding, Hans will take you through a bottom up approach that will get you on the right path and make you look like an expert corporate programmer. It will be the first technical book in a long time that you've read cover to cover and wished there was more content to be had. Anyone criticizing this book simply hasn't read it.
Rating:
Summary: Best introductory JSP book
Review: This is the best written introductory JSP book I've seen (and I've looked at a lot). It's worth the price for just the clear and detailed discussion on Packaging Java Webb Applications (Chapter 2 and Appendix D). I spent hours looking for this info with Web searches and in other JSP books. None of the other sources were clear or complete.
The content matches the title. It's about JSP not JavaBeans, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Examples are very good
Review: This second-edition is very good...provides excellent coverage
of all JSP topics. The examples are VERY helpful. (I also use
the free Tomcat V4.x application-server to host the book
examples and example code that I've developed.)
Rating:
Summary: Examples are very good
Review: This second-edition is very good...provides excellent coverage
of all JSP topics. The examples are VERY helpful. (I also use
the free Tomcat V4.x application-server to host the book
examples and example code that I've developed.)
Rating:
Summary: A must have for JSP developers
Review: This would become a authoritative JSP book,not only because it is written by a key contributor of the JSP technology,but also the very well written examples and structure of the text. Even if you have never read anything about JSP, you could get a jump start to write useful JSP after reading just a few chapters of it. Together with the Servlet Programming written by Jason Hunter, one should have a solid understanding of the JSP and servlet technology.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best Introduction to JSPs...
Review: Typical to an O'reilly book, this book is not a bad introduction to Java Server Pages (JSP). It teaches the basics: what is a JSP, what is a Servlet, how to use them, what are the best practices for JSPs, etc. In my opinion it provides a fairly comprehensive tutorial. There is also a chapter about a design model (the MVC model) which the author recommends. However, despite all this I still do not recommend this book. Despite the fact that "Java Server Pages" seems to be a very comprehensive introduction for JSPs, it really isn't. Why do I say this? Three main reasons: First thing, the author uses his classes all across the book, which makes it somewhat useless for the developer seeking to see how to deal with
programming issues. All it teaches you is how to use the author's classes - but nothing besides!! With all due respect, this is a book about JSPs, not about O'reilly classes - and using premade classes considerbly hinders learning!
Second, the author seems to forget there are many ways of using JSPs and almost exclusively focuses on Java Beans. Well, I have been using JSPs for almost two years now, commercially, and WE DON'T USE JAVA BEANS. It's not that I'm saying it is a wrong approach, but it isn't the ONLY approach - which is what the author continuously states. Last, the author was using Tomcat, so there were Tomcat configuration tutorials all over the book. Since I don't use Tomcat (and I assume, many other people don't use it either), I felt as spending so much space on Tomcat was a waste. It would've been better if fewer subjects were covered, but examples on more Application Servers were given. (Similar to "More Servlets" by Marty Hall which gave each example for 3-4 different servers).
To summarize: I believe that there are better books than this one, however, it does teach the basic technology. After reading the book I can definitely say I learned new things - however, I would still recommend turning to another JSP book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a very good book
Review: Up until now I've been very happy with the O'Reilly series of books. This text however is not written as well as others from this publisher. The author seems unorganized as he is presenting the material, often making reference to later chapters for examples. Perhaps trying to present JSP from a HTML and a developer prospective is hard to do.
| 
