We’ve been tracking the progress of Microchip’s new MPLABX IDE since it was first announced last fall. It’s gone from the original version to beta 4 to beta 5. Looks like MPLABX Beta 6 is now available. Via the Microchip forums, beta 6 includes the following new features:

New Features:

Assembly color syntax highlighting
Smart tool selection
Returned Program Button
Programmer to go
PIC18FJ Starter kit.
FRC in debug mode
Graphical Memory usage in environment display
Tool status in environment display
Manual firmware downloads
dsPIC33EP device support
Instrumented trace for PIC32
Limited stimulus capability
Multiple configuration cleaned up
Third party compiler support:

PICBASIC PRO
CCSC (Only in Windows and requires latest beta release from vendor)
SDCC (Linux/Windows, not tested in Mac). No source level debugging. Plugin courtesy of Rodrigo Almeida.

Looks great! Head over to the download page now and get yourself a copy.