If I understand correctly, you're looking for some sort of dynamic navigation objects for web pages like drop-down menus or sidebars that expand/contract subtopics.
Although I know of sites that use Java for that purpose. these days you can generally get the same effects with less pain (and more portability) using JavaScript and CSS.
In the current muddled state of the Internet world, client-side Java is sort of a last resort. It's best suited for complex input, interactive graphics, and other things that would be difficult or impossible with JavaScript and other "universal" client-side resources.
You don't have to depend on your ASP to play with server-side Java, though! Get a copy of
Tomcat. It's the open-source
JSP and
Servlet server from the Apache organization at
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat - Version 4 is probably the simplest to setup and use.
Just download it and set it up on your local machine. I do recommend at you have at least 600MHz worth of CPU, though. Java can be very hungry. I have servers running Tomcat at 200MHz, but you can tell when a page is being recompiled.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.
