Features HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.0 Released (July 16, 2018) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.0 New: Data inspector interprets bytes at the current caret position into various datatypes: binary (bit sequence), integer, floats, time and date, character, GUID and disassembly (x86 and AMD64) allows editing all types except for assembly option to display integers in hexadecimal option to select big/little endian byte order property grid widget/control written from scratch New: 64-bit version of HxD support for RAM/virtual memory editing of other 64-bit processes integration into 64-bit Windows Explorer context menu New: Fully Unicode based GUI and program code Enhanced: Disk-open window Shows disks to non-admins to allow opening those that normal users have access to (e.g., removable USB drives) instead of always requiring to restart as admin. Shows more information (name, hardware id, type, size) for easier identification Sortable by columns/categories Resizeable window Enhanced: RAM/virtual memory open window allows sorting, shows PID and bitness (32/64) of each process Enhanced: Disk write handling automatically unmount relevant partitions/volumes before writing, to avoid access errors where possible Enhanced: Reduced locking to a minimum and adapted caching significant code redesign and rewrite to allow for minimal file locking to enable easier sharing files with another program less disturbing "file has changed externally" messages, at the bottom of a hex editor window New: Import function supported formats are: Intel Hex, Motorola S-Record and ETL Extended Enhanced: Export function new format: PureBasic New: Alternating color for hex columns (configurable) Enhanced: Compare window option groupbox for window arrangement option groupbox to select compare scope New: Unified setup (includes all languages, all editions, 32/64-bitness) Portable edition can be configured through setup, then becomes independent. Ensures a user is not surprised when storing HxD to a write-once medium, then HxD opens for the first time and the configuration can't be changed. Allows to create readonly config for HxD (e.g., for use on CD/DVD or USB thumb drives). Better Windows Vista and higher support Automatic request for admin priviledges when configuring Windows explorer context-menu Better error handling for inaccessible disks New file open/save windows New: Recently opened disk images (restores bytes per sector as well) Enhanced: Disk editor detects sectors larger than 512 byte and can access full size of a volume/disk (Windows could limit it to file system's end) Enhanced: Allow “bytes per row” to go up to 4096 instead of just 512 New: Option to make hexadecimal numbers in editor lower case New: Add CRC-32C as new supported checksum Enhanced: CustomCRCSettings stored to config file Changed: Statistics window evaluates the current selection only, or the entire file if there is no selection Enhanced: Search window Tab per datatype instead of a combobox New "Search all" button (and result window) Enhanced: Windows explorer context menu Option to choose with entries to add, instead of adding both, "Open with HxD (readonly)" and "Open with HxD", by default Enhanced: Update checker supports proxies that require user authentication Enhanced: Hex Exporter adds number base when outputting offsets, e.g., "StartOffset(h): 12345678" Babelfish and related translation tool chain significantly enhanced for easier automation, 64 bit (PE file handling), Unicode, full XML, and new Delphi version support. Performance enhancements, flicker reduction Many bug fixes and other refinements of code and GUI (some listed in the forums) Rewriting or updating lots of third party libs to x64 and Unicode Patching Delphi RTL/VCL bugs
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.1 Released (September 27, 2018) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.1 New: UTF-8 Codepoint in datainspector gives much more detailed feedback when a code point is invalid Now also rejects every possible encoding error and handles characters entered as surrogate pairs New: bytes-per-line option for Intel Hex / Motorola S-Record export New: option to lock toolbars in place Enhancement: ask to close files opened in HxD before securely deleting them Enhancement: RTF exporter uses always UTF-8, even for Latin1, which improves compatibility Enhancement: displayed and inspectable volume size is not limited anymore to just the file system area, but covers the entire volume extent Enhancement: compare feature: set caret and scroll position to last compared bytes, even when no difference was found Together with improved error message makes results more clear Enhancement: HxD's internal clipboard is not limited to 4GiB anymore Change: Enforce HxD 2.0 to run on WinXP+ only Fix: after starting HxD, it would be in minimized state if it was last closed in a minimized state Fix: HTML exporter - encoding rules and comments now follow W3C's recommendations Fix: properly display volume size (instead of the hosting physical disk(s) size) Fix: assertion and encoding errors in source code exporters Fix: canceling a compare would give the wrong message, that files are identical, but the file sizes differ. Fix: trying to delete a selection or a single byte using the del key (while not having write rights) would not properly abort the operation: temporarily an unintended selection would be created or the caret would remain hidden Fix: data inspector sees only a selection of one byte after deleting a byte with del key Fix: error in computing SHA512 in debug builds Updated translations Various minor UI fixes
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.2 Released (January 16, 2019) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.2 New: "Save selection" command Enhancement: Give some save/open dialog more specific titles, than merely generic "save as"/"open" Fix: Byte order handling / endianness in the datainspector some datatypes have only one byte ordering, or need special handling because they really are a structure, instead of a simple byte array GUID is a structure made of several integers; each of those fields needs to be handled individually, instead of reversing the whole byte array DOS time&date and FILETIME are structures like GUID UTF-8 Codepoint has only one byte ordering, so no byte reordering should occur x86 instructions have only one byte ordering Fix: Store/restore proper docking of panels and toolbars, even if they are locked Fix: "Access Denied error after installation" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=968 This also fixes the bug where settings made when HxD is launched as a last step of setup are lost Fix: "Issue remembering window size at multiple inputs" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=969 This also fixes the problem where HxD would not restore its main window properly, when it was minimized through a click on the taskbar button beforehand, and restored by the "Open in HxD" menu entry in the Explorer context menu Fix: "Garbage when copying from hex panel in some files" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=982 Fix: BytesToHex would produce overlong string (with garbage in the superfluous characters), when the only byte group is the leading partial byte group; in other words, when Count bytes are entirely in the leading byte group, and no other byte groups follow Fix: "Custom CRC triggers Range Check Error" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=978 Fix: Configuration: make sure to properly handle signed integers up to 64-bit Fix: "System Error: The handle is invalid" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=948 Fix: "Scrolling on Windows 10 tablet problem" https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=929 Fix: Enable gesture support (single finger pan) that was disabled due to a bug since Delphi XE 3 (or probably earlier, since they added touch support, and broke Windows' automatic support for legacy apps) Fix: The Application/MainForm would not restore as it should when the MainForm was minimized by clicking the taskbar button Other minor fixes/minor cosmetic changes New translations: Italian - Costantino Grana Polish - Pawel Porwisz Chinese Simplified - 何志翔
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.2.1.0 Released (February 17, 2019) Website Changelog Download
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.3.0.0 Released (July 6, 2019) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.3.0.0 2.3.0.0 (July 6, 2019) New: open source plugin interface to extend the data inspector https://github.com/maelh/hxd-plugin-framework supports dll plugins made in C, C++, Delphi or any other language which can deal with a C-like interface includes example plugins New: array navigation toolbar in datainspector (next/previous/first/last element) allows to navigate types like ad-hoc arrays, that span the entire stream / file, extending left and right from the current element shown in the datainspector all fixed-width data types support navigating forwards and backwards by default backward navigation needs special support for variable-width data types like UTF-8 since UTF-8 is self-synchronizing, determining the previous element is possible (however, x86 assembly, for example, cannot be supported, since trailing bytes in an instruction encoding can also appear as leading bytes, which therefore only allows for an unambigious forward scan) New: unintrusive pointer type support in data inspector clickable goto link, which is right aligned next to integer type name implicitly treats integer types as pointers / addresses / offsets signed integers are treated as relative offsets, unsigned integers as absolute offsets avoids cluttering the UI with many more rows by having each integer row have a dual function (acting as pointer as well as plain integer) typed pointers and pointers that use complex adressing schemes (such as using a lookup table, or computing of an address based on parameters instead of a simple immediate value), will follow with structure views New: added Int24 and UInt24 types to data inspector (useful for wav files) be sure to reset the data inspector row order in the options, if new types appear in the last rows New: separate portable and installable versions (also reduces number of wizard pages) portable setup runs with least privileges portable setup defaults to desktop folder Enhancement: reduce flickering in data inspector when resizing or during fast selection, especially for the text box Enhancement: unfold a section if a goto command jumps into it Enhancement: implemented new TXmTabControl to enable Ctrl+(Shift+)Tab navigation in Search and Replace windows behaves like native TPageControls from Delphi (native TTabControls do not support keyboard shortcuts for tab switching) allows focusing the tabs itself to allow navigating with Left/Right arrow keys, yet still focuses the first child control when switching tabs, as required Enhancement: edit controls in block selection windows only validate the entry on losing focus allows for more flexible editing and temporarily invalid states Change: for more consistency in error messages, the goto dialog always displays the computed target offset, instead of the text in the offset text box (which can contain absolute or relative offsets) Change: rename optical disk to optical disc (used disk for consistency in the past, but disc is just more common) Change: turn all http links into https ones Fix: data inspector ignores leading and trailing whitespace where not relevant to the data type (e.g., removing for integers, but keeping for character types) Fix: always treat integers as unsigned when displaying them in hexadecimal Fix: physical floppy disk drives would show a too small size (limited like the logical ones) Fix: writing to floppy disks could fail, because they did not get locked and unmounted Fix: make the height of the bottom dock normal size again (it would appear too small, making people believe no results are produced, for example when generating checksums) Fix: data inspector: when data name column was too small, the splitter could be overdrawn / interrupted with white space Fix: properly handle https URLs by passing INTERNET_FLAG_SECURE and do not fail on redirects from http to https Fix: Setup would choose English by default, instead of picking the language based on the OS's locale Fix: tab order in various windows (search and replace, and the option frames for each); correct tab order even if option frames are not shown for a certain data type Fix: ensure tab switching with Ctrl+(Shift+)Tab keeps working after a switch, by setting the focus to the first control inside the tab each time a tab switch occurs Fix: selections would unfold sections even if unnecessary Other smaller fixes, many internal enhancements and refactorings Lots of work on UTF-8 and handling grapheme cluster boundaries for future UTF-8 support in the hex editing window itself, see https://blog.mh-nexus.de/2019/06/compressing-arrays-of-integers-while-keeping-fast-indexing/ details of the general UTF-8 support design: https://forum.mh-nexus.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1004 New translations: Dutch - Jaap Kramer Japanese - Airumu Turkish - Koray Duman
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.4.0.0 Released (February 28, 2020) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.4.0.0 2.4.0.0 (February 28, 2020) Restructured plugin interface easier to use from non-object-oriented languages, such as C https://github.com/maelh/hxd-plugin-framework New: support signed hexadecimal numbers in data inspector (for Int8, Int16, Int32, Int64) relative numbers are used in assembly, for example, so signed hexadecimal numbers should be supported UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, UInt64 remain unsigned Enhancement: integer types in the datainspector support a leading + sign rewrote many conversion functions for more consistency and to deal with corner cases not handled well by Delphi's built-in functions Enhancement: error message (when a relative "goto" offset is not within the bounds of a file/stream) will mention both relative and obsolute offsets for easier reference negative offsets are now also shown with a minus sign in hexadecimal Fix: datainspector plugins fail to jump to the previous/next/first/last element Fix: Closing "Block select" window with Enter key will ignore changes in currently selected text box Other minor fixes and clean up New translations: Indonesian - Syahriel Ibnu Irfansyah Greek - Stefanos Kiourkoulis Portuguese (Brazilian) - Daniel Maganha Hungarian - Timinoun
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor v2.5.0.0 Released (February 10, 2021) Website Changelog Download Spoiler: Changelog v2.5.0.0 ( see file changelog.txt ) 2.5.0.0 (February 10, 2021) Version 2.5.0.0 --------------- * Hex editor: implement horizontal mouse wheel scrolling (including handling of Logitech driver bug) * Data inspector: • New: added LEB128/ULEB128 types (variable width integer types used in WASM and dwarf debug information) • New: introduce readonly type converters (to allow uniform error messages when attempting to change values, also for converter plugins) • Enhancement: better error handling so that typical errors are caught and a more specific error message is given - error message for plugin DLLs of wrong machine type (x86-32 vs. x86-64) * Exporters: • New: skip undefined or unreadable sections, such that Intel Hex and S-Record files can be created that have gaps • New: source code exporter option to set the maximum text column or bytes per lines (= array elements per line) • New: SRecord and IntelHex exporters can now have maximum of 250 and 255 bytes per line, respectively - therefore there is also a new default block size/bytes per line setting for each of the exporters, which have a more common size of 32 (for both) - allows user to select very large block sizes, yet default to a commonly used size * Importers: • New: Intel Hex and S-Record support undefined regions of arbitrary size, by creating undefined foldable regions, instead of creating zero filled blocks for them • Enhancement: rewrite logic to allow for data records that are out of order (addresses aren't strictly increasing), or overlapping, even when there are gaps of undefined data; previously this could lead to errors, or would only function without undefined data gaps • Enhancement: Intel Hex and S-Record importers ignore leading and trailing whitespace in a line * Checksums / digests: • New: custom checksum - can generate a checksum, with settable bitwidth for the checksum result, the checksum addends, and the endianness - useful for various exotic formats, such as ROM files * Search window: • Enhancement: added support for (U)Int24 • use same code as datainspector to convert from string to integer • improved the naming of floating point and integer types (closer to data inspector) • searches for both signed and unsigned integers, choosing the right type depending on which fits best (negative numbers => negative type, positive numbers => unsigned type; this is ok, because the positive numbers in the signed type have the same encoding as in the unsigned type; this is a feature of two's complement encoding of integers) * Tool windows: • New: menu items and shortcuts to activate and cycle through tool windows - activates (and shows when hidden) either of: data inspector, checksums, or search results - implements MRU logic for activation (like Alt+Tab in Windows) - can be canceled (and originally activated tool window will be restored) - can handle dockable panels, pagecontrols, and childs of those to handle and keep track of activation - properly handles switching between back and forward cycling, by switching from Alt+F7 to Alt+Shift+F7, and interrupting cycling when pressing another shortcut - extended shortcut handling of VCL/Delphi to handle repeated uses of two shortcuts as part of a shortcut sequence, to properly implement MRU handling, and canceling sequencing (which restores the originally activated tool window), or committing the last chosen tool window, as the activated one • Global shortcut key Esc to focus editor window * PasteFromClipboard: • do not delete then insert data in pmOverwrite mode, instead, only overwrite • also ensure selection/caret is restored, and therefore always begin a group if selection is available * Extensive work to support undefined sections in hex editor that can be deleted, or overwritten, all with undo capability; concerned a lot of supporting internal data structures/algorithms • allows for support in importing and exporting files with gaps (=undefined sections) - allows for round-trip handling of Intel Hex or S-Record files * Settings: • Data type converters only store their friendly type names in the settings/INI file, when the user changes them - this allows for updating those names from version to version, and having them appear automatically without resetting the data inspector in the options - also useful for translating HxD, which read the names from the settings when not resetting them, making it appear the translation is not complete * Fix: entering positive numbers for (U)Int64 results in an out of range error message * Fix: Search window: "any" bitwidth does not accept positive integers >= 2^63 (since it was limited to signed numbers only, now supports unsigned ones, too) * Fix: HxD would sometimes not detect it was installed (and not in portable mode), because of a case sensitive path comparison * Fix: access violation when deleting sections (sections were fixed before, so this bug never triggered) * Fix: custom checksum computation uses wrong step size to advance in the byte stream it processes; it would advance in steps of the final checksum's bitwidths, instead of the addend's bitwidth * Fix: when overwriting one nibble (key press in hex column) in unaccessible data, set the other nibble to 0 automatically * Fix: dockable panels could change fonts in docked and undocked/floating modes * Fix: several type and pointer shorting issues, due to types not compatible with x64; they would cause hard to track bugs in the x64 version of HxD under certain versions/configurations of Win 10 (ensuring everything is allocated in memory above 4GiB, during testing, allowed to track them down) • issues were in some own code, some third party code, and some Delphi RTL code (TRttiContext, TValue.Make) * Various other small enhancements and minor fixes
By following development? By looking at the included readme? By checking the version number of the program itself? Also why is an "average user" even using a hex editor? Even CrystalDiskInfo is 8.11 right now despite the site still showing 8.10, but beware "average users".
