I'm trying to set up a test a simple jsp setup based off of Chapter 3 example 1. It's very simple - an index which has a link to a log in page, a log in page, and a logged in page. Im not concerned with forms or anything like that. My problem is I'm using "User.java" and "User.class" that are stored in WEB-INF/classes/custom. The Testing.war includes these. The first line in User.java is "package custom;" and the first line of the log in page is <%@ page language="java" import="custom.*,java.util.*"> copied from the chapter 3 example 1 format. For some reason, User is undefined. I debugged with Sun ONE Studio 5, and found that it looks like its correctly importing both custom.* and java.util.*
I can't figure out why User is undefined. I made sure to look at everything from the chapter 3 example 1 (and WEB-INF) and everything is in the same format.

Here's what the directory looks like
ROOT: Testing

Testing
- WEB-INF
| - classes
| | - custom
| | | - User.java
| | | - User.class
| - lib
| | - jstl.jar
| | - standard.jar
| - web.xml
- META-INF
- main
| - index.jsp // only contains a header and a link to page.jsp
| - page.jsp // Trying to use the User object (has a log in form)
| - page2.jsp // displays whether the test application works or not
- Testing.war

Any ideas?

It's unusual to put the User.java in the WEB-INF/classes directory. While this is not likely to be causing you issues, this might indicate that your development environment is not setup quite correctly.

Running Tomcat or other containers within an IDE can be problematic due to classloading issues. I would suggest trying to run this from a command line to see what happens.

To be honest, I am beginning with web-applications - no real experience with that, and I only am slightly familiar with java from a semester class several years ago. But, I am quite familiar with C and C++ used with visual studio, so I don't know how to run this from a command line. I do now know how to compile with command line, use ant with command line, but that's about it.