Innovations in the Nordstjernen Web Browser
a day ago
- #web browser
- #security
- #C programming
- Nordstjernen is a web browser written from scratch in C, designed for full auditability with only about 127,000 lines of code.
- It is a clean-room implementation targeting HTML and CSS standards directly, without using existing engines like Gecko or WebKit.
- The browser emphasizes small size for security and maintainability, being 200–300 times smaller than major browsers like Chromium.
- It uses a modern C23 standard with features such as nullptr, checked arithmetic, and attributes for improved safety and readability.
- Key innovations include ahead-of-time JavaScript compilation to avoid JIT vulnerabilities and a sandboxed renderer with landlocked security.
- Development relies on AI agents, a spec-first methodology, and a custom license (NSL-1.0) to prevent competitive free-riding while allowing commercial use.