• Added parseURLWithValidationErrors(), which records and returns validation errors per the standard's parsing algorithm, often performing additional checks on the input.
• Added isValidURLString(), which checks an input string against the standard's valid URL string predicate.
• Fixed userinfo parsing for astral code points (@spokodev, #333). This was a rare instance of whatwg-url failing to match the specification.

Notably, the new validation code allowed us to make significant progress on whatwg/url#704, and as far as we can tell at this point, the two types of validation agree.

Breaking change: now requires Node.js ^22.14.0 || >=24.0.0.

Updated the domain parser to have an ASCII fallback path, per whatwg/url@a8d5ca3.

Fixed URL.parse() to return a proper URL object, instead of an internal implementation object. This fixes, among other things, URL.parse(x) instanceof URL.

Breaking change: now requires Node.js versions ^20.19.0 || ^22.12.0 || >=24.0.0.

Added encoding support for query string parsing, via the new encoding options to parseURL() and basicURLParse(). (The URL API is not affected, as it always uses UTF-8.) Thanks to @ChALkeR and his excellent @exodus/bytes package for providing the foundation!

Updated our tr46 dependency, which updates our international domain name support to reflect Unicode 17.0.0.

Breaking change: now requires Node.js v20 or later.

Made minor updates to failure cases for "host"/"hostname" and "port" state override parsing, following URL Standard changes whatwg/url@c23aec1 and whatwg/url@cc8b776. These have no impact on usage of the high-level APIs.

Updated our tr46 dependency, which updates our international domain name support to reflect Unicode 16.0.0. Also includes the related changes to the URL Standard:

• whatwg/url@cd8f1d6
• whatwg/url@a6e4492
• whatwg/url@c3d173f
• whatwg/url@7f3e3b6

Added U+005E (^) to the path percent-encode set, per whatwg/url@9bc33c3.

Ensured opaque paths always roundtrip, per whatwg/url@6c78200.

Improved performance for very long inputs.

Added URL.parse(), per whatwg/url@58acb06.

Breaking change: removed Node.js v16 support.