what is essential for learning struts?

i am new to struts frame work
here i deployed a blank-stuts application in tomcat 5.5 and ran it.
it is ok now
and i when i refer to the code i just see same old jsp's and servlets except validations , and some tld(standard tags)

so do i need to learn JSTL before going to struts?

is validation frame work acts an major role in struts frame work?

please can anybody tell me the solution

thank's very much

In my view, the best way to learn the basics of Struts is to work through one of the many good tutorials.

This link has a number of them for you to choose from.

Regarding validation: It's very useful and used by many developers, but it's entirely optional. Struts will work without it just fine, and there are many other options for doing validation. Do your research. Find out what the validation framework does and how it does it. Then decide whether to use it or not.