Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Nice series of Jakarta Struts JSP tag libraries tutorials at JavaBoutique. The latest focuses on "bean and logic" libraries but even the intro is good stuff.

Personally I use my own beans with JSP and MVC and I find its easier and more intuitive and often more separated (logic v presentation) than custom tag libraries. After all custom tags arent java code in your JSP but they ARE CUSTOM TAGS. At that point your front end developer has to KNOW THE CUSTOM TAGS. So you have eliminated the need for them to know java but they must know the tag library. Thats where I just make beans and methods on the beans that are essentially the same thing as custom tag libraries, so therefore I dont really see the advantage. (In fact I re-use many of the beans, some are just utils, some validate forms, etc, and I find this has LESS overhead than maintaining the "tag libraries".)

For more see the linked JavaBoutique article.   Introducing: the Struts bean and logic Tag Libraries