The third edition of this book was released only a year after the second [1], because the JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.0 specification and the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) 1.1 specification both came out after the second edition was released. JSP is an increasingly popular Internet/Java software technology; its users will welcome this new edition of the classic handbook.

JSPs are gaining in popularity because they can be designed, and largely crafted, by nonprogrammers (unlike servlets), and because it is much easier for a group of people to put together a sophisticated Internet application with JSP. This book is more than 600 pages long, but JSPs are not rocket science. The bad news is that the book is a big encyclopedia on its subject; the good news is that it is an encyclopedia, and you do not need to read the whole thing to complete any specific task you may wish to do with a JSP.

A JSP is essentially a servlet turned inside out. A servlet is a Java program that is able to display text and pictures on a remote browser screen, and collect input text from the browser to perform (usually) a simple transaction; any text to be displayed is represented within the appropriate special Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) quote marks. A JSP is not a program, but rather is an Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) or Extensible Markup Language (XML) document, and any actual computation or database lookup to be done for its completion is coded in Java. That Java code, however, is placed in special XML quotes, to identify it as a program snippet within the text document. The two Java technologies, servlets and JSP, are completely compatible; servlets are usually used when there is not a lot of text or graphics to be displayed on the browser screen, and JSPs are used in the situation where a great deal of context is to be transmitted to the browser. There is also the case where a team of mostly graphic artists is creating an Internet application, and specifies a few computations or Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) functions for a Java programmer to write as snippets, which the team will then incorporate within the special XML quotes. When a JSP is actually compiled, it is turned into a Java servlet anyway, so you can even think of JSP technology as a sort of super graphics/textual macro generator.

It is possible to invoke another entire JSP from within a JSP, but, starting with JSP 2.0, the JSP Standard Tag Library allows custom tag library actions to be implemented as Java classes, or as regular text files containing JSP elements. This edition has three chapters on using the JSP Standard Tag Library, and developing custom tag libraries. Tag libraries allow for greater modularity, and reuse of Java code and/or JSP elements. Custom tag library actions can be implemented either as Java classes, or as regular text files containing JSP elements. In the previous version of JSP, they could only be implemented as Java classes, putting them out of the reach of the nonprogrammer. The new chapter 11 shows the reader how to develop custom tag libraries as plain text files, and how to package them with .tag extensions for XHTML, or .tagx extensions for XML.

The O’Reilly programming books are popular, standard reference works for professional programmers. They are known for their accuracy, and for the fact that that their programming examples compile and run. While they may be a bit too encyclopedic to be used as textbooks, they are highly prized by teachers of programming for their lucid explanations, and all those wonderful working example programs. All you need to write JSPs is to download a current Java software developer’s kit (SDK), and a copy of Jakarta Tomcat, and to buy this book. Success guaranteed!