Abstract: A method, system, and computer program product for transparently loading resources (such as stored bitmaps, images, fonts, and sound files) from read-only memory (“ROM”) for an application program executing on a Java Virtual Machine (“JVM”). Typically, the invention will be used on an embedded computing device which has no disk storage and no file system software. A novel class loader is described, which loads resources from ROM and returns an input stream object as is expected by the existing application program. Therefore, when using the present invention, no change is required to existing application code to use resources stored in ROM. (In addition, no change to existing applications is required in order to invoke the code of the present invention.) The invention may be used with programs written in the Java programming language, or with programs written in other languages that execute on a JVM.