Getting started with J2ME

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ Setting up the Tools ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤

The tools you need to install to get started with J2ME.

Again there exists a number of setup and toolkit for developing J2ME applications. The strength of these tools changes all the time. For this tutorial the recommended setup is the following.

Install the Java SDK 1.4.x or newer if you don't have it installed (notice that Java 1.5 is called Java 5)
Java is free and can be downloaded from: http://www.java.sun.com

Download and install Eclipse 3.0
Eclipse can be downloaded from http://www.eclipse.org (it is free)
I had some problem getting the setup to work with Eclipse 3.1 so try to download 3.0 to be sure that the stuff is working. You can have both 3.1 and 3.0 installed at the same time without problems.

Download Nokia Developer's Suite 3.0 for J2ME. It can be downloaded from forum.nokia.com: http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/0,,034-2,00.html (It is free, but you have to sign up for a forum.nokia.com account). The toolkit has to be installed in a directory without spaces for it to work (e.g. this path can pose problems "c:\program files" whereas "C:\nokia" will Work).

That should be all!

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ Other Toolkit ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤

Wireless Toolkit
http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/0,6566,034-367,00.html

Eclipse ME (an open source plugin to Eclipse)
http://eclipseme.org/

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ Other Resources ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤

The following presentation given at JAOO 2004 in Cannes describes some of the advantages and disadvantages of programming in Java, Microsoft and Symbian.
View presentation

For more information about J2ME check out:
http://www.java.sun.com

or read about the optional packages at
http://www.jcp.org/