Minecraft 13w16a Features - New Launcher and UI, Multiple Jar Support

Minecraft 13w16a is available to download now. The 13w16a snapshot (part of Minecraft 1.6) contains major improvements to the Minecraft launcher and UI. These include updating LWJGL, Minecraft API support, automatic snapshot updates and security improvements.

One of the other big improvements with the new launcher is the ability to select different jar's from the menu. So if you want to play an older version of Minecraft you can simply select the jar and away you go. You won't need to worry about renaming the old jar and calling the new one minecraft.jar.

Even better, you can create several jar's with all your favourite mods and texture packs spread out. So you might have a jar for Mo's Creatures and another with Optifine and Biomes o Plenty. Alternatively, you might have a jar of an old version of Minecraft for a mod that's not updated yet, another for the latest released version and another for the latest snapshot.

Whatever setup you like, you can keep them all safely sealed in jars and swap them in using the launcher.

Starting in Minecraft 1.6, the game will run on Java 6 (rather than Java 5) and the OpenGL version 2.0 will be used.

New Minecraft Launcher - Screenshot

Why a new launcher?

Nathan explained these very well, and the case for a new launcher is a no brainer. Here are some of the advantages:

Ability for Mojang to add new code libraries to help increase performance and stability
Automatically downloads sound files (sound packs)
API support (later)
Version switching
Automatic snapshot updates
Multiple Minecraft accounts (pick username)
Friendlier error messages and warnings
Passwords not stored to disk
Fixes game freezing bugs and full screen crashes

Old launcher is NOT Minecraft 1.6+ compatible

One huge, very important piece of information..

You MUST have the new launcher to play the latest versions of the game. This is starting from Minecraft 1.6 (snapshot 13w16).