Bow

The bow is a weapon that can be crafted in Indev, Infdev, Alpha, and Beta. Bows will have a new look in the Adventure Update, this will allow players to shoot arrows farther.

Using the Bow
To use a bow, it must be the active item and there must be arrows somewhere in the player's inventory; they do not need to be on the action bar. Simply right-click to use the bow, which will shoot the arrows. Holding right-click will shoot arrows rapidly. The rate of fire will be between 1 arrow every 1/3 seconds or 1/4 seconds, however if you click rapidly you can fire much faster.

It should be noted that the bow is very effective at killing powerful foes from afar, such as Ghasts, Skeletons, Creepers, and Spiders and Spider Jockey all of which either use ranged attacks, or are extremely dangerous in a close proximity to the player.

It seems that an arrow will shoot slightly to the right of the crosshair in the center of your screen, and that they're affected by gravity and will shoot slightly downwards of the crosshair as well. Those differences are barely noticeable in close fights, but make a difference when shooting on long distances. To hit the target on long distance you'll have to aim a bit over it and to the left of it.

The 1.8 beta update will allow the player to pull back the bow. This will also have its own sound effect and animation

History
In Survival Test, the player did not need a bow to shoot arrows. Instead, the Tab key was used to fire arrows. However, arrows still had to be collected to shoot. Launching arrows this way was much slower than the bow now fires them. As of the Beta 1.2 update, bows are used in the dispenser block crafting recipe, presumably for propulsion/dispensing.

Arrows
Arrows provide ammunition for a bow, and can either be crafted or found as a common drop from skeletons. They can be fired from a distance and in rapid succession. They will fly in a ballistic trajectory affected by gravity and drag in air or water and will travel approximately 15 blocks when fired parallel to a flat plane. Arrows in water get much more drag than in air, and leave a trail of bubbles in their wake. Arrows have a maximum range of around 52 blocks when fired at a 38 degree angle on a flat plane.

Arrows deal two hearts of damage if they successfully hit the target. Immediately after hitting the target, there is a cooldown during which the target will be immune to further arrow damage. Arrows hitting the mob in this state will lose all speed and drop to the ground. Otherwise, the bow will fire as quickly as the right mouse button inputs, which can drop as low as 1 arrow every 2 ms. Because of the damage cooldown and the fact that arrows bouncing off immune targets can damage the player if the mob is too close, arrows are best fired slowly and carefully despite their high potential rate of fire.

Arrows will also stick into objects they come in contact with and will remain there for exactly a minute before disappearing; the distance from the object and the angle determine how far into the target the arrow will go. Arrows that have been fired by the player and stuck into terrain are retrievable and never break. Arrows that hit a target such as a mob will disappear. Skeleton-fired arrows are special entities and cannot be collected.

They can bounce off entities like Minecarts and damage immune mobs. In multiplayer, if PvP is on, a player can hurt themselves if they run forward while shooting arrows while the server is lagging. It is also possible for players to damage themselves with their own arrows by firing one directly up and standing still. Arrows fired directly upward appear to travel approximately 25 blocks before falling.

If the block in which an arrow is stuck in is destroyed or disappear (leaves), the arrow will fall and can injure the player or a mob.

Arrows shot through lava or fire will catch aflame and show an appropriate animation, though they will do no more damage nor will they set anything else on fire. It is rumored that burning arrows are planned by Notch as a craftable recipe. Burning arrows have a luminance of 1.

Arrows shot at Minecart track will stop the minecart from passing over that block until the arrow despawns.

Before the Beta version 1.2, Skeletons would only drop arrows when killed; they now have a chance of dropping both bones and arrows when killed.

If a bow is used to make a Dispenser, and arrows are loaded into it and then connected to a Redstone power source correctly, it will shoot and damage mobs, animals, and players by shooting or "Dispensing" arrows.

Arrows and Circuits
While arrows shot at Switches or Pressure Plates will not trigger said inputs directly (unless fired from a dispenser onto a pressure plate), workarounds can be used to trigger circuits from a distance. For instance, a minecart can be used in such a way that destroying it with arrows releases the wooden pressure plate it is resting on, or a painting can be shot off a wall and fall onto a wooden pressure plate to activate it.

Trivia

 * Even though Skeletons carry bows, they do not drop bows when killed.
 * Arrows(before Beta 1.6) stick in any block, even non-solid ones, except for fluids. For example, they will stick in Torches, Sugar Cane, and Portals.
 * Arrows cannot break Glass.
 * Tilling grass when an arrow is on it causes the arrow to fall to the block below.
 * Shooting an arrow through lava causes it to be set on fire, but the effect is purely visual.
 * Arrows bounce off of enemies flashing red, allowing them to be recollected. However, no damage will be dealt.
 * Arrows do not set off TNT.
 * When an arrow is shot at a painting, the painting will break and the arrow despawns.
 * If an arrow is shot at wheat and then the wheat is destroyed, the arrow falls through the farmland block below it.
 * If an arrow is shot at a door and door is opened or closed, the arrow will be stuck in midair.
 * If you have Tiny rendering distance and fire outside of the render, the arrow will be stuck in midair.
 * If an arrow is shot into a block by a player and the game is exited the arrow can no longer be picked up by the player when the game is re-entered. This also happens with arrows shot before dying.
 * When asked about whether bows, if the fire button is held down, will shoot further and hit harder (via this Tweet), Notch responded "That's coming :)."
 * When a TNT covered with arrows is detonated, it will fire the arrows out in all directions upon exploding.
 * Arrows will occasionally pass through blocks, particularly thin door blocks, due to the full length of the arrow passing over the block during one frame of physics simulation (the “tunneling” or “bullet through paper” problem).
 * Arrows can trigger wooden pressure plates if there is a particle effect source also nearby.
 * Arrows can suddenly lose momentum when it hits the smoke of a dying mob.
 * After being stuck in a block, if you break the block that the arrow was stuck into, the arrow will fall down, if any entity (including you) was under the falling arrow, it will deal damage.
 * If an arrow is shot in the air it can fall down and damage the player, this can deal 2-2.5 hearts of damage.
 * Arrows in SMP will seem to teleport to the top edge of the block above the one its stuck on.
 * Before the Seecret Friday update 7 (1.0.14), the recipe for arrows used iron instead of flint, proving far more costly to make them.
 * In previous versions,if the player shot themself with an arrow, any tamed wolves that belonged to the player would attack their owner.
 * In 1.8, arrows will get lodged into entities.