 what s new in views 3 views 3 is the newest major revision of views views 3 retains all of the core functionality of views 2 retaining the views 2 interface views 3 for 7x has a brand new interface views 3 incorporates a number of new features as well as pulling in much wanted features from a few addon modules that were written for the 2x branch major changes interface include some movement of familiar features and additional options for some of these features there s not a huge difference from the previous views 2 interface just an added filter for status  views 3 admin interface contexthelp is available by clicking the small blue questionmark icon contexthelp in views 3 is provided by the advanced help module so make sure to install that together with installing views 3 the small blue help icons will be available in various parts of the views ui in particular look for them as part of the description of a display  when setting style options and in various editing sections such as path   menu and the like the filter header now includes the status filter this enables you to filter your views list by whether the view is enabled or disabled allowing you to effectively narrow your list when you re looking for an active view major new features views or has been incorporated semantic views have been incorporated the jump menu style has been added the panel fields style has been added pluggable back ends pluggable text areas pagers and forms translation plugin exposed sorts adding a view so let s jump in and add a view for this example we re going to create a user view which will display a list of users adding a view the first step in adding a view is simply entering a name only alphanumeric characters no spaces a description tag and the view type to get the user view we selected the user radio button configuring the new view let s start by adding some fields  adding fields clicking on the icon next to the word fields unfurls a section beneath the view information with all the available fields grouped by comment file node node revision taxonomy and user and probably a few others this is a general paradigm for the views 2 interface clicking on a widget or link unfurls a section beneath the view information with the relevant interface usually what is being edited will be hilited in yellow as well when adding items you can use the groups dropdown box to show only a subset of the fields available according to the above groups or select all to see all fields available which is what was selected when the section unfurled for our example we re selecting the user group and adding the user email   user name and user picture fields adding fields once we add our fields they show up in the fields section of the interface we will be walked through each field we added so keep clicking update  even if you don t make changes to the field and you will see the next one the fields we added can be rearranged by clicking the up down icon right next to the add icon we used earlier we can also remove a field using the same interface rearranging fields from here the fields can be dragged up and down by grabbing the little drag handle on the left and moving them where you like making a change to any part of the view by clicking update usually triggers a refresh of the view preview which is conveniently located right below the main interface views preview now that we have some fields set up we can turn our attention to basic settings for the view it s important to note that all the interface elements pertain to the current display selected for the view as mentioned before a view can have multiple displays the first time you create a view you ll be manipulating the default display you can add displays using the add display button whose basic settings are completely different from each other this lets you have as many displays of a view as you would like all sharing items such as sort criteria filters and arguments but different display settings like title style fields and pager settings also any display you add automatically inherits display settings from the default display initially so you can keep a core of common settings in your default display and add additional settings for every other display adding a page display let s stick with the default display and twiddle some settings we can set the title to user view 1 and the style to table in views 3 view styles control how a view display looks there is now the style as well as the row style which focus on different parts of the output styles have been moved to their own style settings box in the ui a breakdown of view output we change the style by clicking on the current style on the left hand side of the view information area selecting a views 3 display style we re given the style options of grid   list   table and unformatted  additional display styles can be added by modules which have views style plugins  choosing a style reveals a settings button which you can click to configure the style you ve chosen in the shot below we ve selected and are configuring the table style which we re using to produce a more compact output than we had earlier selecting and configuring the table style  todo finish this document  