Nordstjernen Web Browser

Nordstjernen released version 1.0.40 of its Sol Explorer browser alongside Northstar 1.0.20 and Southstar 1.0.6, adding shared Web Workers, ElementInternals support, functional popups, frame documents, and hardware VP9, AV1 and HEVC decoding via GStreamer. The Norwegian-built browser, written from scratch in C, now reports full implementation of 141 WHATWG HTML spec rows with 31 partial and none absent, and passes 91.5% of relevant Web Platform Tests (151,974 of 166,164) plus 73.2% of CSS subtests. Its QuickJS engine passes 82,243 of 82,248 test262 cases, and the core engine spans roughly 245,000 lines of project C, with each tab isolated in a sandboxed renderer process and no JIT in either the JavaScript or WebAssembly engines. The releases matter as a rare from-scratch, security-focused browser engine challenging the Chromium-dominated field on standards compliance rather than market share. Watch next for whether the remaining partial spec rows and the CSS test gap close in subsequent releases, and whether the optional memory-safe Rust IPC parser becomes a default.