Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Best Introduction For Newbies & a Great Reference for Us
Comment: I have worked on JSP and Servlets for over 6 years now. However, due to my focus on management tasks, I don't get to write too much code anymore. Recently, I decided to refamiliarize myself with the technology for some upcoming interviews.
True, that a lot of information is available online for free but the problem is that it is hard to go over it. It is long and boring . Trust me, I tried!
Enter "Head First Servlets and JSP", the "brain friendly" reading guide. It is not just a marketing gimmick. The book actually uses lot of tricks like funny cartoons, questions, repetition to make the facts stick in your mind.
Chapter 1 starts with the need for Servlets and JSP, introduction to HTTP protocol, difference between Servlets and CGI and even a short 2 minute intro to HTML!!! The whole chapeter takes about 10 minutes but you learn a whole lot.
Chapter 2 expalins the Web app architecture, definitions of Web server, Container, MVC and Deployment Descriptor! Again a great overview that gets you up to speed very quickly.
Chapter 3: My favorite! An Intro to MVC. In less than 15 minutes you are up and ready to answer questions about most talked about design pattern today.
Chapter4: Introduces Servlets. It contains everything you need for an interview or exam and also to write and get started on Servlets!
Chapter 5 and 6 deal with the session management, servlet context and config.
Chapter 7: Your first introduction to JSP. Very informative and easy to follow!
The most important thing about this book is that it makes learning fun! No boring articles. Just casual conversation between friends that helps you learn fast.
CONCLUSION: If you are looking for a great book to get started on Servlets and JSP or to review the information for an exam or interview, THIS IS THE BOOK.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: read this if your only goal is to pass the test
Comment: This book was largely a waste of my time. It's almost entirely focused on coaching you on how to pass the jsp exam. It starts out ok but then quickly devolves into cramming you full of what you'll need for the exam. If you want to really learn jsp, find a better book.
Also, I'm not a big fan of the Head First style which is a lot like a comic book, with clip art pictures and dopey dialog. They're physically big books but that's because they have so many pictures of these people "talking" to you and faux hand-written notes. It's cute at first but wears thin and not productive.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent - I passed with 82%
Comment: It worked for me ! I passed the SCWCD 1.4 exam last week with 82% . I used this book as my core preparation material in combination with whizlabs exam testing software.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Effort
Comment: I was truly disappointed with this book. Kathy Siera is a very prominent figure in the Java world, but the style that she uses in her Head First Series is just not efficient enough. In other words, for some working professionals like me, getting to the point as fast as possible is a must, and these head first books are not doing that for me. You have to work your way through, ahem junk, to get to the useful stuff, and you waste time doing that. If you are like me, you would prefer a book that hits all the spots in the shortest way possible. I mean it is not really possible to read 500 something pages of junk in two weeks and get ready for your SCWCD exam. I know I 'll probably catch hell for this, but I do not recommend Head First series to serious developers. Instead, I recommend the Manning Publishing book "SCWCD Exam Study Kit," which also comes with JWEBPlus, which is a very cool test engine. Save yourself some time and stay away from this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Head First Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam
Comment: There it is on page 94: "Important note: while the first three chapters covered background information, from this page forward in the book, virtually everything you're going to see is directly related to or explicitly part of the exam."
I would expect this sort of thing from most of the certification industry, but not from O'Reilly. Essentially, this book covers the certification exam; that it also provides an introduction to Servlets and JSP is largely incidental. O'Reilly is certainly one of the most consistent, best publishers of technical material, and this book is very good. However, it is a surprise that they would publish a certification exam study guide rather than a serious tutorial about the material. Even though I have learned a good bit about Servlets, I am left wondering what they have left out, simply because it is not on the exam.
If you are looking for a SCWCDE study guide, this is it. If you are looking for a fast, good introduction to Servlets, this may also be it. But in the future, I'll probably give the Head First series a pass, and I'll be a little more careful about reflexively picking up O'Reilly books.
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