Since the first public Alpha at the end of January, there have been 12 new releases, and many more dev builds. On average, that's a new version every two weeks for the past five months. During this time, Sublime Text 2 has made great strides in functionality, and a correspondingly large increase in users. Sublime Text 2 has long outgrown its Alpha tag, so it's time to put a Beta label on instead.
There's a new release to mark the occasion, and it's got a bigger change list than any previous version. A couple of the highlights are:
Command Palette
The Command Palette provides a quick way to access commands that don't warrant a key binding, and would usually be hidden away in a menu. For example, turning Word Wrap on or off, or changing the syntax highlighting mode of the current file. It uses the same fuzzy matching as Goto Anything does, meaning most commands are accessible with just a few key presses.
The command palette can be triggered via Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows and Linux, or Command+Shift+P on OS X.
Distraction Free mode
Distraction Free mode is full screen, with an extra emphasis on your content. All user interface chrome is hidden, leaving you with nothing but the file you're working on. It's a great help when you want to ignore everything else and just write. Distraction Free mode is accessible from the View menu.
Now that Sublime Text 2 is in Beta, I'm planning to reduce the number of releases to around one a month, to avoid frequent update prompts. If you prefer living on the edge, the dev channel typically has a new build every 2 or 3 days.
Traditionally, the Beta tag has been used on software to indicate it's feature complete, and is going through testing before the final release. That's not the case with the Sublime Text 2 Beta, which is ready to use, but subject to change. New releases will be coming out, and they'll be adding new functionality and changing how things work.
People use Sublime Text 2 every day to get real work done - if you haven't tried it yet, now is a great time.