I recently got a decent touch screen phone (a Samsung i900 Omnia) and decided that I would have a go at writing some little applications for it. I expected it to be quite different to writing server side code, which is what I spend my days doing, and was quite plesently surprised to find that in fact it was actually very similar. I hadn't realized that JavaME was quite as feature rich as it atually is.

Anyway, this is going to be a bit of a stub of an article for now as I don't have time to fill it out properly. The main problem I had getting going with JavaME was code signing and generally getting round the unnecessarly complex and draconian java security system. As far as I know no other language makes their developers jump through these kinds of hoops, why does Sun make Java developers do it?

Initially my problem was trying to get any signed code to run on the MIDlet manager that came with the phone. I've not been able to determine which MIDlet manager it is but it doesn't have many features, the biggest feature it's lacking is the ability to prmpt the user to choose whether to execute a restricted command. All restriced commands are refused point blank unless the code is signed. I tried signing my code with my own certificate and creating my own root CA but I just couldn't get it to work. Inthe end I gave up and installed Jbed . At least Jbed allows me to install unsigned code and then prompts me when I try to access the file system.

Resources

• How to self sign code.Needs to be read in conjunction with the next two links.
• Creating a code signing certificate.
• Signing your own certificate.