More Servlets and Javaserver Pages (Sun Microsystems Press)

While many books on Java try to cover just about everything, this title's focus on what's hot in server-side Java makes this one a standout. The book begins with a very solid tutorial to servlets and JSPs, including important HTTP fundamentals (such as request headers and processing forms). The author does a good job at summarising APIs and common options, which help make this book useful as a working reference, too. The level of discussion here will work best with those with a little Java experience, but even beginners could do a lot worse than this title as an introduction to Web programming.

A great feature of this text is that the author walks you through the actual details of deploying your Web applications (notoriously tricky, even for experts). Screenshots on installing and using tools (such as the free Apache and Tomcat software packages), plus detailed advice on deployment will make sure your code actually runs. (A standout here is the summary of all configuration options available in today's containers.)

If you are coming to servlets and JSPs from an earlier version, this text excels at covering the latest in custom and standard-tag libraries. Besides explaining new JSP 1.2 tag conventions, later sections also look at an important new development in Sun's evolution of the Java platform, the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL). Coverage of tag programming (including several sections on looping) closes out the book. There's also material on important new advances in servlets, such as filters (which allow you to log or change requests) and servlet events (which afford a greater measure of control for your Web applications).