Whats New

Version 3.2 has some significant enhancements to existing features as well as some major new features and a few bug fixes.

The Properties dialog has been enhanced in many ways, with support for several new data types as well as the ability to associate keywords, comments etc with a file. The Find dialog search alignment options have been greatly enhanced. Also all operations on the selection have been fixed to work with a selection larger than 4 GBytes, as well as showing a progress bar and being abortable.

Templates are now much easier to work with due to the addition of the Template menu and the ability to turn on and off the template display at any time. Also how a template is displayed and the columns visible in the template tree view (and their width etc) is remembered on a per file basis. Editing of template data (Data Column) has also been improved.

HexEdit 3.2 now includes full support for the widespread ZLIB compression format, as used in many file formats and communication protocols. This is ideal for testing all the options and uses of ZLIB with no programming required.

A very useful new facility is Info Tips, which allow simple display of any value or expression by simply holding the mouse over any part of a file in HexEdit. The tips display in a transparent popup window which becomes opaque when you move the mouse over it. Any number of tips can be configured to display all manner of things (any expression involving integers, floating point numbers, dates, strings or boolean values and using dozens of pre-defined values like the current byte value, address etc).

new page for storing comments, keywords and category for each file

drop list of currently used categories - to avoid slight variations of the same word
new columns in recently used file list for categories, keywords, comments
sort in recent file list by category etc
search by keyword

separate display of file size on disk and in memory
display of amount of time that each file has been open in HexEdit (for edit and viewing)
character display using any code page

select from many code pages provide by Windows
allows display of EBCDIC code pages
displays DBCS and multi-byte character sets
displays the numbers of bytes required for multibyte character sets

IEEE and IBM floating point pages were merged into one floating point page

addition of C# Decimal type in the floating point page
support for time64_t type (64 bit integer equal to the number of seconds since 1/1/1970)

alignment is no longer restricted to 1, 2, 4, or 8 bytes
addition of an offset option
alignment can either be relative to mark or start of file

all commands that work on the selection can now handle > 4GByte selections

import/export as hex text
encryption/decryption (any Crypto API alg, but not internal algorithm)
all operations and conversions including new case conversion commands
all checksums including new MD5 algorithm
new ZLIB compression/decompression commands

all long operations now display a progress bar
all long operations are now abortable by pressing the Esc key or SpaceBar

Change how templates are displayed for each file at any time

hide template view
display in splitter
display in tabs
current setting remembered when file re-opened

Current view settings remembered per file

width of splitter
visible columns in template (tree) view
width of visible columns

Templates menu makes using templates simpler

new, open, save, save as
display settings and whether template is editable
etc

Switch/case enhanced

evaluated expression can now be a string
last case can have an empty match string as catch-all (default)

Bugs in Unicode strings and bit-fields fixed
Edited template fields (Data column) are changed to red background

Allows to differentiate between display and editing formats
Allows fields to be re-edited if there were typoes
Fields are refreshed with display format (and normal background color) when refresh button is clicked

New and updated templates for common file types (.EXE, .EMF etc)

Compress/decompress using ZLIB as used in many common file formats

PDF documents
HTTP protocol
PNG image files
Zip file 'deflate' method
gzip (as commonly used under Unix/Linux)
etc

Complete control of ZLIB settings

compression level
window size
memory usage
how often flush (recovery) points are written
header (zlib, gzip or none)
strategy - check which is best for your type of data

Any number of tips can be shown in a list in the tip window

use pre-defined tips or add your own
easily create, delete, and reorder the list
unused tips can simply be turned off in case you need them later
give a descriptive name so you remember what the tip is for

Interrogate byte(s) under the cursor as:

8, 16, 32 and 64 bit integers
32 and 64 bit floats (IEEE and IBM)
date (many time_t and Windows date formats)
current file big/little-endian toggle supported
string (ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode etc)

Other useful values

current address
current sector and offset
length of file
address of the mark
etc

Combine the above into any expression

integer, float, date, string or boolean result
Eg test if a particular bit is set ((byte&0x80) != 0) - gives boolean result
Eg display distance to mark (mark - address)

Extensive support for formatting the result

Integers support any printf format string (eg %d, %u, %X)
Integers also support nice formats (hex, dec, oct, bin)
Floats support any printf format string (eg %.7g)
Dates supports any strftime format strings (%c, %Y %M %D, etc)
Booleans support false/true, off/on, no/yes, 0/1, F/T, etc

Display name of current bookmark
Set transparency of tip window

becomes fully opaque when mouse hovers over it

Info on available drives is gathered in a background thread on startup

avoids long delay when the Open Special dialog is first displayed OR HexEdit starts up

Open Special dialog now shows more info about clusters etc free and in use
Bug in the display of drive size for large drives was fixed

New MD5 (cryptographic checksum) command
New Close All and Save All commands
New conversions convert to upper or lower case
New option for Motorola-S export to allow for non-adjoining records

Only areas that are highlighted are exported

About box acknowledges contributors to the software

direct link to contributor web sites

Customizable background for main window
New XP and Vista compatible true color icon
Customizable double-click event for highlights
Customizable double-click event for bookmarks

What’s New in 3.2