Signing Code with Sun's JDK 1.1.x
Sun has its own set of signing tools, which have evolved along with the JDK.
The JDK ships with a command-line tool called javakey. “javakey” provides management of a database of entities (people, companies, etc.) and their public/private keys and certificates.
HotJava and the appletviewer program that comes with the JDK can validate JARs signed by javakey. Since the VMs in Communicator and Internet Explorer do not support javakey signing, in order to run javakey-signed applets with those browsers, users must download and install Sun's Java Plug-In.