WebKit received a lot of attention lately as the browser component Google chose for its new Android mobile platform. WebKit is also the basis of Apple's Safari browser, as well as Adobe's AIR project. A version of it can be found on KDE as the Konqueror browser, and the mobile WebKit is at the center of browsers on Nokia's phones. Indeed, the open-source project enables anyone to build a full-featured Web browser, including support for CSS and JavaScript.

WebKit 3 was recently released with key features that Maciej Stachowiak, a developer on the project, summarized in Ten New Things in WebKit 3:

• Enhanced Rich Text Editing
  As you browse the web with a WebKit 3 based browser, you will get a complete and functional rich text editing experience on the new read-write web... Specifically, we have worked together with developers of RTE libraries and applications to improve compatibility.
• SVG
  WebKit 3 features a major new technology - SVG... SVG is an XML markup language for graphics that allows rich interaction and which can be mixed directly with XHTML... We haven’t profiled and optimized SVG quite as much as the rest of the engine, but early tests seem to indicate that it already has blazing performance.
• XPath
  Another major brand new technology in WebKit 3 is XPath, the XML Path Language. XPath is a W3C standard query language that lets web developers efficiently find particular elements in the document...
• New and Improved XML Technologies
  The XSLTProcessor JavaScript API for XSLT, and many XSLT fixes and improvements including support for external entities, the DOMParser API, the XMLSerializer API, incremental rendering support for XML, ... support for named character references in XHTML... Much more complete and compatible XMLHttpRequest, including support for event listeners, incremental updates for persistent server connections, parsing of more XML MIME types, support for more HTTP methods.
• Styleable Form Controls
  WebKit 3 introduces the ability to customize the look of form controls with CSS. We still use standard looking native form when no custom styles are applied, but we have the ability to customize the look to better support sites with a strong visual identity.
• Advanced CSS Styling
  We have added many advanced CSS features that let content authors make better-looking sites with less effort. These include experimental WebKit features or early implementations of CSS3.

Additional features include performance improvements and a smaller memory footprint. Along with WebKit 3, the project released two developer tools: the Web Inspector and the Drosera JavaScript debugger.

While Microsoft's IE and Mozilla's Firefox are still the dominant browsers, WebKit and the various products using it have been slowly breaking those browsers' duopoly. Do you believe that the emergence of an increasing variety of browsers will make developers' job more difficult? Or is there a silver lining in the recent proliferation of browsers?