Java Edition Beta 1.5

Beta 1.5 added statistics and achievements, new types of rails and saplings, cobwebs and other changes and fixes.

Additions

Weather, including rain, snow, and thunderstorms
- Pigs struck by a lighting bolt become zombie pigmen.
- Creepers struck by lightning become charged and will have a much more powerful explosion.

New settings in options:
- Ability to change GUI size (Small, Normal, Large, Auto).
- Advanced OpenGL (Occlusion Culling: doesn't render blocks that the player can't "see", helps performance in cards that support it)

⇧ Shift + clicking on something in a chest will immediately move the selected item(s) into your inventory and vice-versa.

Birch and spruce trees now drop birch and spruce saplings, respectively.
Pigs that die by burning now drop cooked porkchops upon death.
Huge performance improvements for old and slow computers.
Crafting a ladder now produces 2 ladders to offset the fix of the staggered-ladder exploit.
Saplings can now serve as fuel in furnaces; they have the same smelting time as Sticks.
Dropped items in flowing water move faster than before.
Redstone dust can be placed on snow.
Wolves are more common, even in non-taiga/forest biomes.
Unarmed damage was increased from 1 to 2.
Pressing Tab ↹ will switch between input boxes.
The sides of grass blocks now use the same color as the top.
The crying obsidian texture is removed.

15 bugs fixed

You are only 'on' a ladder (can climb it/fall slowly) if your lower half is in the ladder block, rather than any part of you.
- It is no longer possible to climb with a one-block gap in a ladder, or a ladder that starts at eye level.
On fancy graphics, the sides of grass blocks are now biome-specific and match the shade on the top.
Player movement through water has been fixed to previous speed.
Wolves' pathfinding now has a better understanding of doors. They will go through doors most of the time, but will sometimes get stuck on the 3 pixel thickness of the door.
The lighting on portals and ice has been fixed when using Smooth Lighting.
Stairs are no longer transparent to light.
On multiplayer, the health of wolves are now synchronized between server and client, causing wolves to only whimper when low on health, opposed to all of the time.
Redstone in off state is red again.
Fixed saplings occasionally growing trees that stretch to world limit
Crops hit with water now drop seeds and wheat, as opposed to just wheat.
Moving minecarts will continue to move if the world is closed.
The Mojang logo is the correct size when the client is maximized.
The exploit to make chests three or more side by side by placing a water source and placing a chest in that source has been fixed.
⇧ Shift + F2 doesn't attempt to create massive .tga screenshots, which are more than 1GB in size, anymore.
Sugar cane can no longer be placed on any block that is not dirt.