Other Aspects of Tiles

This chapter has shown one way to use Tiles—by using the plug-in and the layout definition file. You can also explicitly define layouts in your JSP by using the <tiles:definition> tag. The recommended strategy for using this tag is to put all of your definitions in one master file, and then have all your client pages include it.

In our opinion, this is a much less useful application of Tiles. You lose the ability to define a single common template and use the XML file to define the content of the layouts. It basically reduces Tiles to the level of a glorified template library.

As with most Struts tag libraries, there are a plethora of support tags and parameters that can be used for specific cases, but a good perusal of the API documentation for the library should answer most of your questions. Most, if not all, of them are intended for advanced applications using Tiles.