Question 1

What is Base64 and what is it for?

Accepted Answer

Base64 represents arbitrary bytes using 64 safe characters (A–Z, a–z, 0–9, + and /), so binary data can travel over a text-only channel — an email, a URL, a JSON payload. It is a change of notation, not encryption.

Question 2

Why are hex and binary computed from UTF-8 bytes?

Accepted Answer

The text is first encoded to bytes with UTF-8, and those bytes are what we show in hex or binary. That is why one accented letter (like “ł”) or an emoji spans several bytes — “ł” is C5 82, and “🚀” is four bytes, F0 9F 9A 80.

Question 3

What are ASCII codes and how do they differ from UTF-8?

Accepted Answer

An ASCII code is a number 0–127 assigned to a character (“A” is 65, a space is 32). In UTF-8 every ASCII character is a single byte equal to its code, so the “Decimal (ASCII)” column shows exactly the ASCII codes — which is why it is the representation used most in code. Non-ASCII characters (accented letters, emoji) span several UTF-8 bytes, whose decimal values are shown.

Question 4

How does URL-encoding differ from plain text?

Accepted Answer

URL-encoding (percent-encoding) replaces characters that are unsafe in a URL — spaces, slashes, non-ASCII — with %XX sequences computed from the UTF-8 bytes. A space becomes %20 and “ś” becomes %C5%9B. It is the same text, written safely for a URL.

Question 5

Does the tool decode as well as encode?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Switch “Input format” to Base64, hex, binary or URL-encoded, paste an encoded value, and you will see the recovered text plus every other representation. Malformed input (e.g. invalid Base64) is flagged without crashing.

Text encoding

All representations

Good to know

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