The changelist for 1.6 news

Minecraft Beta 1.6 is getting released later this week, but hopefully on wednesday.

Here's the changelist so far:

Added:

+ Craftable maps
+ Hatches
+ Tall grass in some biomes
+ Mushrooms now spreads (very) slowly
+ Server property view-distance. Sets the radius of terrain updates (in chunks) to send to the players. Range 3-15, default 10.
+ Nether support to multiplayer

Bugs fixed:

* It's no longer possible to build solid blocks on the top layer of the maps (sorry!)
* Players stuck in walls will slide towards the nearest gap if there is one
* Made booster tracks speedier
* Severely nerfed fire so it spread slower, and doesn't spread infinitely
* Seeds are now found in tall grass, using a hoe on the ground no longer works
* Blocks destroyed by other players in multiplayer now shows the breaking block particle effect
* Activated dispensers make sounds and trigger particles in multiplayer
* Doors make sound for other players in multiplayer
* The record player now supports more than 15 different songs
* Running out of memory corrupting the current level
* The side textures of grass getting extra dark when mining them
* Anaglyph 3d rendering mode having severe visual bugs
* The crash screen vanishing immediately
* Not being able to target blocks when at x or z pos 1000
* The achievements screen messing up the sky colour
* Saving while sneaking dropping the player through the ground
* A system clock change messing up the game speed
* Rain sounds not playing with fast graphics enabled
* Hair and cloaks being rendered in the wrong locations on sneaking players
* The attack/swing animation not being applied to the armour layer
* Player rotation not being loaded correctly when loading a saved game
* Arrow physics, making them not get stuck mid-air when you open a door
* Arrows hitting reeds, portals, and other non-solid blocks
* Keybindings not getting saved properly under certain conditions
* The player not being able to sneak off lowered blocks like cacti
* A bug where the player could mine without swinging their arm
* Boats placed on snow being placed too far up
* Submerged boats rising very very fast
* Sand dropping onto boats getting stuck in a falling animation
* A game crash when riding a vehicle or animal into the nether
* Falling while riding not dealing damage to the rider
* Buttons and levers too close to the player being impossible to use
* Dispensers shooting through walls
* Fire hurting through wall corners
* Entities reaching water through wall corners
* Placing doors next to cacti creating half-doors
* Buttons and levers being placeable on leaves in “fast graphics” mode
* Furnaces and dispensers not dropping their contents when destroyed
* Dispensers biasing later slots
* Farmland taking too long to dig
* Tilling below some blocks being possible
* Tilling the underside of blocks somehow working
* Fences and stairs sometimes becoming invisible
* Walking on top of fences not producing step sounds
* Fire sometimes existing mid-air as an invisible block of pain
* Fences and wooden stairs not being flammable
* Fire effect on burning entities sometimes getting rendered in the wrong location
* Fishing rod rendering being a bit lacking
* Fishing rods being stackable
* Mining glass hiding the clouds behind the glass
* Rain falling through liquids
* Items in glass blocks not getting ejected properly
* Water interacting strangely with glass
* Glass not blocking rain sound
* Fences and signs preventing grass from growing
* Rain and snow being incorrectly lit
* Grass staying alive below stair blocks
* The achievement screen not pausing the game
* Some screens breaking the sky tint colour
* Fullscreen mode switching causing mouse issues and screen closes
* Chat messages surviving through game switches
* Ice so it regenerates regardless of whether it's snowing or not
* Rain falling too slowly
* Levers being placeable on weird locations
* Floor levers sometimes not delivering a signal downwards
* Floor levers sometimes not being removed when the floor is removed
* Rail tiles sometimes not properly connecting to a new neighbour
* Minecarts next to each other causing extreme velocities (sorry!)
* Wolves not following their owner if the name has different caps
* Creepers retaining charge level when they can't see their target
* Dying in the nether spawning new portals
* “Fixed” beds in the nether
* Inventory acting weird when portaling by making the portal close all screens
* Wooden pressure plates being mined with pickaxes
* Redstone repeaters having the wrong particles
* Saplings being plantable through snow onto non-grass blocks
* Ore density varying per quadrant from the centre of the world
* Dispenser graphics being one pixel off. ONE PIXEL!!!
* Mushrooms spawning everywhere during nights
* Animals only spawning near light during the night
* The multiplayer join screen input field being too short
* IPv6 addresses being parsed wrongly. To connect to a specific port in IPv6, use the format [1234:567::1]:25565
* Network packets being sent unbuffered, causing huge amounts of packets being sent
* Entity positions going out of synch sometimes. They get re-synced every 20 seconds now.
* Inventory icons not animating after being picked up in multiplayer
* Mushroom soup not leaving a bowl in multiplayer
* Entities above the map height limit becoming invisible
* Healing not flashing the health bar in multiplayer
* Arrows being animated really strangely in multiplayer
* Arrows triggering too many entity move updates in multiplayer
* The compass not pointing at the spawn location in multiplayer
* Fires being impossible to put out in multiplayer
* Record players spawning client-side fake records in multiplayer
* Records not playing for other players in multiplayer
* Players spawning in the wrong location and quickly lerping to the correct location
* Monsters not being visible for players with their difficulty set to peaceful
* Pigs getting hit by lightning in multiplayer spawning client-side zombie pigmen
* Loads of exploding TNT generating way too many particles, possibly crashing the client
* Bonemeal use in multiplayer sometimes spawning fake client-side trees
* Saplings sometimes spawning trees client-side in multiplayer
* Weather sometimes changing client-side in multiplayer
* Grasscolor.png and foliagecolor.png not being read from texture packs
* Stats getting saved to different files in offline mode if the caps in the player name differ from the true spelling

(Development blog link)