Blogging Roller

I think Russell has some good points in his rants about JSP tag libs. One of the design goals of JSP tag libraries was to help get code off the page - to separate business logic from presentation. If you start doing general purpose programming with JSP tags you are going to end up with the same sort of mess you would have with lots of Java JSP scriplets all over your page.

But I think Russell is wrong about JSP tag library portability. There are plenty of portable JSP tag libs out there from open source projects and payware products alike. There is no reason to use a tag lib that will tie you to one app server. However, the learning curve involved in mastering a tag lib can be a drag on developer portability.

Russell, I think you are really ranting about JSP in general not just JSP tag libs. Velocity might be a better choice for you (and for me), but I believe that if you are going to be using JSP then you should be using JSP tag libraries as well. With some forethought you can avoid writing lots of general purpose programming logic using tags. Your tagless JSP code in MiniBlog and SimpleWeb looks pretty nice, but I have seen what JSP code-on-page can degenerate into and it is not pleasant.