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First up is enhanced rich text editing (RTE) - just click the text in this demo to see it in action. The WebKit team has worked together with developers of RTE libraries and applications to improve compatibility, so that it now has support from web applications including WordPress, Google Docs, GMail and Blogger, to name but a few. It has also improved editing to support libraries including TinyMCE and FCKeditor and expects more web apps and toolkits to add support over time.

Both Javascript and page loading are very much faster. Javascript speed tests found that WebKit 3 at at least as twice as fast as WebKit 2, which translates to Safari 3 being two times as quick as Safari 2. The performance increase should be most noticeable on dynamic, "Web 2.0" websites. Overall page loading tests showed WebKit 3 was 1.4 times as fast. While speeds are up, memory usage is down by around 14%.

Safari 3 is the first version to support scalable vector graphics (SVG), an XML markup language for graphics that

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allows rich interaction and which can be mixed directly with XHTML, to create effects like this image dock, crashdown game or interactive graph.

XPath is also new to Safari 3. The XML Path Language a W3C standard query language that lets web developers efficiently find particular elements in the document. XPath is used in AJAX toolkits like TIBCO General Interface, and can be used by CSS query engines for improved performance. XML technologies have also been added or improved, such as incremental rendering support and proper support for named character references in XHTML.

Safari 3 also addresses two areas of styling, providing the ability to customise the look of form controls with CSS and support for advanced CSS styling, such as text stroke and shadow, multiple columns and border-radius and shadows for boxes.

WebKit also has two new web developer tools - the Web Inspector, accessible via right/control click in Safari, and a JavaScript debugger, Drosera, available as part of the WebKit nightly download.

For more information on all the new WebKit/Safari 3 features, see Surfin' Safari: Ten New Things in WebKit 3.