See the IDEs like eclipse and all will use the jars only for compilation..........so its okay if u place even outside the
tomcat but while running the application its mandatory that u should place the jars in web-inf/lib r atleats tomcats common/lib
and coming to TLDs its not mandatory that u should keep them directly under web-inf u can keep anywhere in the webapplication but u need tyo define that in ur web.xml and even in the
jsp pages where ever u use that tld
hope u got what i am saying