What's the difference between Minecraft 1.8 pre-release and actual release?

Question

What has changed between the 1.8 prereleases, and the new, actual release?

Answer 1

Jens and Notch fixed a ton of bugs between the pre-release and the release, including:

• SSP chunk memory leak
• Mineshaft density (half now)
• Increased stronghold count to 3 per map instead of one
• Furnace tile entity crash
• Crafting bench ghost items
• Vines (and leaves) crash in nether
• Use item animation in SMP (blocking and eating)
• Blocking in SMP
• Sprinting with right-click or sneaking
• Added some blocks to creative mode
• Fixed dropping items
• Nothing can be eaten in creative mode
• Enderman client-side problems
• Chicken and cow drop burned food
• Squids drop exp
• 1.7 worlds should get structures
• Farmlands rejecting melon and pumpkin seeds
• Bonemeal on melons and pumpkins
• Bonemeal on mushroom only works on dirt or grass
• Added item drops for cracked and mossy smooth stone brick
• Adjusted fog strength at low positions

Changes reported by Jens on Twitter:

• Fixed experience orb excessive spawning bug in SMP
• Made cave spider poison scale with difficulty
• Nerfed sprinting speed
• Fog toggle key 'F' re-added, then removed, then re-added again as 'F3' + 'F'
• Fixed crash when adding too many items to a double-chest in SMP

Changes reported by Notch on Twitter:

• "Tweaked" Endermen (this potentially refers to the change in eye color and particle effect for Endermen in the final release)
• Fixed issue with holding down right-click to place multiple blocks
• Nerfed vine growth
• Two unnamed fixes and two unnamed tweaks