JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development

Rating:
Summary: Could Have Been Better
Review: I find it somewhat difficult to say that it is really a good book.I found three major shortcomings:

1) A lot of code is quoted from other sources without explanations.It is not uncommon to find 3 pages of code ending with three lines of explanations.
2) A lot of details are included in the text which rightly belong to an appendix.Such details merely distract the attention of the reader from the main arguments.
3) There is a lot of JSP code without a single illustration(screen-shot) as to how this code may render in a browser.The reader must get the picture himself.Again this detracts the attention from the main argument.

On a positive note,I could say that the author has included 3 chapters on the Struts framework,starting the discussion with a good explanation of how and why the MVC pattern has to be generalized from the restricted UI case to the more general web case,leading to MVC2.But this part of the book also suffers from the same shortcomings.

In conclusion, I would say,if more explanations are added,the main text is stripped off unnecessary appendix-type details,and
JSP code is accompanied by screen-shots, this could turn into a very good book.

Rating:
Summary: THE Taglibs Book
Review: I've found this book extremely useful and enjoyed reading it a lot.
The chapters on tag design and cooperating tags are resourceful, detailed and also very well exemplified. And the book also provides an impressive introduction to the Struts framework.
I keep it as my daily reference.

Rating:
Summary: Hit a brick wall
Review: The first chapters are wasted on basic servlet and JSP coverage...if you are not familiar with them already, it is certainly not enough to get you up to speed, and if you already know the basics, you will just skip over them anyway.

The promised "downloadable" example code and instructions to install them are not available. You get plain text files with several files cut and pasted into them all at once, with no instructions at all. And the suthor's site, (...), has no content on it whatsoever.

I would wait and check back for the example code with instructions on Newriders.com and the author's site before buying this book...the examples import packages that you will not have on your system already.

It is hard to give it a fair review without the resources, because it is not possible to proceed past the first chapter without them.

Rating:
Summary: Worth buying
Review: This book covers Tag Libraries and its collateral components from beginers perspective up to the presentation of comercial and open source tags already available on the market, with a very nice introduction to the Struts framework.
It takes a progressive approach to the topic, presenting each detail in tag development, tag collaboration and application development with lots of examples and reviews on each chapter.
With no doubts this book is an excellent reference to the Tag Library Technology.

Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down.
Review: This book really needed a good editor and a ghost writer who knows how to simply explain technical subject. The author probably knows the technical stuff but his explanations aren't at all useful. If you don't already have good background in the material, you'll not learn it here.

My biggest complaints are about the example code.
1. JSP, Struts and Tag libraries are, in the big picture, all about generating HTML. Despite that, NOWHERE in this 442 page book is a single screen shot showing output! There are examples that go on for three pages of coding but do not have a single page showing what the example produced.
2. The examples are cluttered with lots of extraneous code that detracts from the point of the example. In one case, most of the example code had to do with JNDI and not about the tag he was creating. I found that many times I had to wade through a page or two of Java code before I got to the few lines that were the point of the example.
3. The explantion of most examples is at the end, after pages of code, and usually quite short. The publisher should have set the explanation comments in bold and off to the right of the key areas.

Don't buy this book for the explanation of Struts, either. There are far better examples and tutorials on the Apache Struts web site.

Not recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down.
Review: This book really needed a good editor and a ghost writer who knows how to simply explain technical subject. The author probably knows the technical stuff but his explanations aren't at all useful. If you don't already have good background in the material, you'll not learn it here.

My biggest complaints are about the example code.
1. JSP, Struts and Tag libraries are, in the big picture, all about generating HTML. Despite that, NOWHERE in this 442 page book is a single screen shot showing output! There are examples that go on for three pages of coding but do not have a single page showing what the example produced.
2. The examples are cluttered with lots of extraneous code that detracts from the point of the example. In one case, most of the example code had to do with JNDI and not about the tag he was creating. I found that many times I had to wade through a page or two of Java code before I got to the few lines that were the point of the example.
3. The explantion of most examples is at the end, after pages of code, and usually quite short. The publisher should have set the explanation comments in bold and off to the right of the key areas.

Don't buy this book for the explanation of Struts, either. There are far better examples and tutorials on the Apache Struts web site.

Not recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Almost the right Struts book
Review: This is basically a good book. It could have been a great book. The author made a good start; this book provides a fast way to pick up the raw basics of JSPs, tag libraries, and Struts. It also provides a solid background on the business and architectural issues that motivated the development of JSP and Struts.

The biggest problem with the book is that the editors didn't do their job. Normally I don't pick nits with language and spelling mistakes in a book, but there are so many of them in this book that they continually distract the reader. Yes, the author should be responsible for those issues, but the editor is supposed to be the final quality-control check on problems like this. I can't see how the editors read even a few percent of this book before sending it to the printers.

This is a better book to skim than to sit down and read, because you'll get tired of trying to untangle the grammar, fill in the missing words, and take out the extra words as you wade through it. There are several minor technical mistakes too, but most books have a few of those. As is often the risk with fast-moving technology, there is also some stale content in the description of the various Struts tag libraries.

As far as I know this is the only book that goes into any detail on Struts. If you need to learn about Struts, this is a reasonable book to learn from. I'm just glad that my employer payed for my copy. If I'd payed for it out of my own pocket I would probably have sent my copy back (...).

Rating:
Summary: Jsp and Tag Libraries for Web development
Review: This is basically a good book. It could have been a great book. The author made a good start; this book provides a fast way to pick up the raw basics of JSPs, tag libraries, and Struts. It also provides a solid background on the business and architectural issues that motivated the development of JSP and Struts.

The biggest problem with the book is that the editors didn't do their job. Normally I don't pick nits with language and spelling mistakes in a book, but there are so many of them in this book that they continually distract the reader. Yes, the author should be responsible for those issues, but the editor is supposed to be the final quality-control check on problems like this. I can't see how the editors read even a few percent of this book before sending it to the printers.

This is a better book to skim than to sit down and read, because you'll get tired of trying to untangle the grammar, fill in the missing words, and take out the extra words as you wade through it. There are several minor technical mistakes too, but most books have a few of those. As is often the risk with fast-moving technology, there is also some stale content in the description of the various Struts tag libraries.

As far as I know this is the only book that goes into any detail on Struts. If you need to learn about Struts, this is a reasonable book to learn from. I'm just glad that my employer payed for my copy. If I'd payed for it out of my own pocket I would probably have sent my copy back to Amazon.