Clifford Adams

you might want to consider using the dojo (http://www.dojotoolkit.org) javascript toolkit. I know it has a tree widget, but I have not used it.

I have had success using the jcifs project at http://jcifs.samba.org/

yes, you can. I have done it. no special tricks required.

using jstl is quick and easy, so I'm not sure why you would want to write your own

you might be able to use jstl

<c:set var="tmp">
<bean:message key="label.show"/>
</c:set>

<my:tag label="${tmp}"/>

I've looked at tiles, but it doesn't do anything c:import can't

the tag files look nice and flexible.

thanks.

ahhh. I had completely forgotten about tag files.

//off to do some reading

Care to expound a little?

What is the value in writing a custom tag library over using jstl?

I'm curious about different jsp templating implementations. I've decided that I don't want to go with a system like velocity or sitemesh. I want to do it using simple c:import's. There seems to be two schools of thought on this: do it like SSI's or do it like Smarty (the PHP templating system)

SSI:
Each page has the same structure and imports the common parts from other files.

Smarty:
You define what makes this page unique, then apply a template to it. dynamic stuff would be passed to the c:import via params.


I'm leaning towards the smarty approach for it's centralization. Any template changes only need to be made in 1 place.

Opinions?

Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
Personally, I like to keep things simple...

I assume you're advcating c:import, then, eh?

you'll need to show us the errors and the code for us to help.

I'm looking at ways to include common page elements in my jsp pages. Are there any advantages or using a system like tiles as opposed to c:import tags?

DW actually creates pretty clean code as long as you aren't using some of the behaviors or javascript stuff. I actually only use code view. The only thing that keeps me wanting to keep using dw is templates and contribute.

templates will be largely unnecessary if everything is a jsp because I can do site-wide stuff with includes and css. Plus, Websphere studio has it's own template system I could use.

contribute would be mitigated if I wrote a cms-ish app to allow people to edit their pages. And now is the time to do it before I get any more requests for contribute sites!

I appear to be talking myself into dumping dreamweaver

I might be crazy, but I want to try this. We currently use dreamweaver for our intranet development (static html stuff) with java apps doing dynamic things in the background. Several times lately, I've thought I would love to have the power of jsp's at my disposal everywhere in the site. dreamweaver does put a couple special folders in the site root (_mm, _notes) for site configuration, but these shouldn't cause any troubles.

I also have 2 users editing their own content using Contribute, which may pose other complications. I may consider moving them to an online wysiwyg editor like tinymce or something. That would eliminate any contribute problems.

So, am I crazy?

you also want to look at uour uri's. You my have the jstl 1.1 jar's, but you are using the 1.0 uri's. The 1.1 ones look like this:

http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core