Guys,
There is nothing to fear of EL or custom tags. They are really easy things. For beginners, EL is confusing because they dont know the context in which is is applied. Do read the specification from sun site.
I would just like to give you a hint about EL:
EL is used for accessing "scope attributes/implicit objects" with minimum syntax overhead. Think EL as special way to access those things which is friendly for a non-programmer.
For custom tags:
Think it as a link between your pure
Java OO code to your JSP page. It is invented just to make clear seperation between JSP and JAVA. Custom tags are way to invoke your java code from JSP which is somewhere on the server.
all these are (EL/Custom Tags) basically refined 'View' techniques. In Web-tier,
1. View suppose to contain only presentation logic. Not heavy java code.
2. So, View would have only scripting-like things. Tradionally, it used to have <% JAVA CODE %> scriptlets which was terrible for non-coders. So EL/Custom Tags basically remove those things from your page.
I would recon beginners: Try converting existing <% %> scriptlet, JSPs into EL/Custom tag based JSPs. After few conversions, you would be fine.