JSP Intranet application

Question

Hi all,
i am a total newbie to java, just learning JSP & java. actually i am in to creating a brower based intranet application using JSP & PostgreSQL. how good is JSP for developing such an application? again about the user interface design part, i just know HTML only. so how we can create give cool interfaces like datagrid (in visual basic) etc.
and i hav heard that JSTL can serve the same purpose of JSP. so can anyone give me some info on JSTL and how to work with it.
thanks a lot for ur time
aleena maria

Answer 1

For an intranet JSP is good, its more powerful than ASP (vb6) or PHP and holds its own against .NET
On the WEB php is better as its much easier and cheaper to get hosting, also, there is a lot more open source stuff around which is good.
I would stick to HTML for your output, I dont know what datagrid is, if its an MS plug in it will only be available to IE users, which may be ok on an intranet
In jsp you can create tag libraries, where you assign a simple tag to a funtion within your code, this way HTML developers can use the tags, without being exposed to the java code itself, JSTL is / are the standard tags.
I dont see much benefit in using tags unless you are part of a team that includes programmers and WEB designers all working on the project, I prefer to write classes, which are equally re-usable (javaBeans)