title: Referencing a resource placed in WEB-INF folder in JSP file returns HTTP 404 on resource
body: <p>I have a dynamic web project called BookShopWeb which I created in eclipse, with the following directory structure</p>
  
  <pre><code>/BookShopWeb/|
    |--src
    |---WebContent
                  | 
                  |---META-INF
                  |----WEB-INF---web.xml
                              |
                              |--css--styles.css
                              |--jsp---index.jsp 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In web.xml I set the start page as</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;welcome-file-list&gt;
  
  &lt;welcome-file&gt;/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp&lt;/welcome-file&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p></p>
  
  <p>In the index.jsp I am including the css as</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;head&gt;
  &lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../css/styles.css" /&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The index page when loaded however does not show the css info.I checked the element with firebug and it shows an error report</p>
  
  <pre><code>Apache Tomcat/6.0.29 - Error report..
  The requested resource (/css/styles.css) is not available.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any idea why this occurs?How can I correct this?
  thanks
  mark</p>