It has been more than 10 years since the introduction of the Mosaic Web browser from NCSA when the Web first achieved widespread notice. Early Web pages were generally simple, as people slowly learned the new Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) concepts. As the Internet-browser wars heated up, more people entered the fray, and different technologies, including Java, appeared to assist in the creation of dynamic Web sites. These dynamic sites are what we are accustomed to visiting on the current Web. Of these new technologies, several dominant candidates emerged, including ASP, CGI, and later PHP.
With all these existing technologies, one might wonder why even bother with JavaServer Pages (JSPs)? Although there are many reasons, the answer can be summarized by noting that no other competing technology offers a simple and intuitive interface that supports the full power and portability of the Java programming language.
With the introduction of the JSP 2.0 specification, which is covered in this book, writing JSP pages has become considerably easier, which will soon be reflected in the variety of development tools available. As a result, the number of potential JSP developers will soon increase, as will the corresponding number of JSP Web applications. In summary, now is a great time to learn JavaServer Pages.