Chapter 2. Simple JSPs

Chapter 1 presented the case for dynamic sites and surveyed a number of techniques for building them, focusing on the strengths of JavaServer Pages technology. Now that these preliminaries are out of the way, we can actually start creating some pages. This chapter will begin by introducing some of the simpler features of JSPs.

To begin, consider Java News Today (JNT), the mythical news site we discussed in Chapter 1. The company has set up Tomcat and is ready to start building their site. Beginning at the beginning is always a good idea, so they have decided to start with the new home page and, for the moment, not worry about the dynamic elements. Their first version is shown in Listing 2.1.