Recommended Lightweight Online Tools for Developers: hexed.it, text2image, Carbon, and draw.io

Hello everyone, I'm Xuan Yuan.

Today I want to share a few handy tools I frequently use for work and learning.

hexed.it

The hexadecimal editor is familiar to many, especially those in the information security field, for viewing, modifying, and analyzing files, exploits, and shellcode.

Common desktop hex editors include 010editor , WinHex , and UltraEdit , but installing them can be cumbersome and sometimes risky.

hexed.it offers a lightweight, browser‑based hex editor that works instantly without installation.

Visit https://hexed.it – the name literally means “hex edit”.

The interface is simple, ad‑free, and divided into three panels: a file data inspector on the left, the file content in the center, and file attributes on the right.

The top toolbar includes useful built‑in utilities.

File Format Identification

When a file lacks an extension, the format identifier quickly tells you what it is; the service maintains a database of over ten thousand file signatures.

Hash Calculation

It can compute common hash values (MD5, SHA‑1, etc.) for a file.

Hash Query

Integrated links to platforms such as Google, VirusTotal, and Hybrid allow you to look up hashes directly.

Histogram

The histogram shows the frequency of each byte (0x00‑0xFF) in the file, a feature mainly useful for security analysts.

Tip: Adding a single byte (e.g., 0x00) to the end of a file changes its hash, which can help bypass simple hash‑based filters.

text2image

text2image converts plain text into an image.

Website: https://text2image.jaychen.fun/

It’s handy for turning code snippets into pictures without taking screenshots, supporting custom themes, colors, margins, and optional watermarks.

Carbon

Carbon focuses on converting code into beautiful images with extensive syntax highlighting for almost all programming languages.

Website: https://Carbon.now.sh

It also lets you copy the result as an image, URL, or other formats, enabling quick pasting into other tools without saving a file.

draw.io

draw.io is an online diagramming tool that requires no registration and provides a rich set of shapes, themes, and styling options, making it easy for beginners to create professional flowcharts and architecture diagrams.

All the illustrations in my articles are created with draw.io, and I highly recommend it.

If you find these tools useful, please like and bookmark the article!