I've just spent several hours looking for a free or open source hex editor, and it is surprising how many editors there are, and how few are worth checking out. I didn't think I would ask for much: a simple standard interface and the ability to open large files. I must have looked at more than 50 websites and installed nearly 20 applications, until I found HexEdit from Catch22 Productions.
I have used the free version of ECS HexEdit for quite a while, but its nag screen and ancient interface started to bug me. xvi32 is a nice editor, and there are several other popular ones, but the real showstopper is trying to open really large files with them... you can't! (well you can, if you have enough memory.)
I became curious when I saw the neat looking screenshot of the Catch22 HexEdit editor, my heart jumped at the mention of "no decrease in performance with larger files", then I installed it. Contrary to practically every other program, the interface is slick, clean, and good-looking without having to change any settings (many others have e.g. awful color schemes or font settings).
 Catch22 HexEdit, with the toolbar turned off. Note the lack of annoying multicolored images, strange font settings and other obvious usability flaws. |
Stress test: opening a very large (> 500 MB) file from a Samba share. And it was instantly there! And you can use the scrollbar without having to wait for the display to update itself, even for huge files. (Amazing that most other developers seem to be eager to add lots of exotic functions to their editors, but are too lazy/uninterested to avoid loading the whole file to memory.)
The default settings are great, the interface is impressingly professional (I like the many little details such as alternating shades of blue text in the Hex view), there is an option for shell integration (which is unchecked by default -- good choice), and I even like the about dialog. To say it again: very very good and professional interface. I'm seriously impressed, and haven't even tried the integrated calculator or type view (where you can define custom binary data structures).
See, it shouldn't be that hard to develop perfect software. Amazingly, nobody seems to do it (still haven't found the perfect text editor). But the HexEdit developer, James Brown, should do something about his google pagerank. His editor kicks the other free editor's asses, but nobody knows about it.
Also on his site: his version of the Matrix screensaver, his version of the Microsoft Spy++ tool, great Win32 programming tutorials, and more. And sourcecode for most of his software (released as free, under no formal license).
Comments
Comments are closed. You can contact me instead.