Chapter 1. Understanding JSP Custom Tags

JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) is a standard tag library that can be used in JavaServer Pages (JSP). Sun introduced this exciting new technology to allow tag-based programming to exist more naturally with the already tag-based HTML. Because of this, Sun anticipates that JSTL will be an easier programming environment than the traditional scriptlet-based JSP programming. To understand JSTL, you must first understand what a tag library is.

Sun introduced JSTL as part of its Java Community Process (http://www.jcp.org). Most Java Community Process technologies begin as a Java Specification Request (JSR). JSTL began as JSR-52 and JSR-152. JSTL has since been released as JSTL 1.0.