Beginning JavaServer Pages™

Chapter 4. CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, and JSP

You can use JSP as the vehicle to provide an interactive user experience over the Web. The previous chapter illustrated how this might be accomplished in an e-commerce environment. Creating a dynamic Web-based user interface is the primary way in which the JSP technology is used within Web-based applications.

Knowing that JSP can be used to generate the HTML-based user interface, readers who are Webmasters or Web site designers may have another question on their minds. If JSP is such a flexible dynamic presentation environment, maybe it can be used to generate some of the client-side user interface elements too. More specifically, it is very interesting to consider what can be achieved when JSP is used to generate client-side Web page elements, including the following:

• Cascading Stylesheet coding

• JavaScript coding

• VBScript coding

This chapter explores the exciting possibilities that are available when JSP is used in generating these elements. Unlike JSP logic, these elements have the unique property that they are interpreted and executed by the Web browser on the client side. Because it is possible to use JSP to generate code that will be executed on the client side, developers can enjoy features and capabilities beyond anything achievable via plain HTML and stylesheets.

In this chapter, two examples are presented. The first example shows how to implement a customizable user preference selector using JSP. Using this technique, you can enable ...