Since Views3 has reached the stage of Release Candidates (RC), it is probably more or less feature complete. However, for users it is often hard to tell what the committ comments in the changelogs mean for using Views.

Thus I'd like to open an issue primarily targeted to the Views users that documents the changed and new features. Also this issue might help to distinguish between bugs (does not work as it should) and changed behaviours (does work as designed, but differently than in Views2), and it might point out potential pitfalls when updating from Views2 to Views3.

I'll start with a couple of things that I noticed during my first updates to Views3.

(1) Changed & new: Grouping, and Group by

We now have ways to group result sets in two places: As before there is the "Grouping field" which moved from 'Basic settings > Style' to 'Design > Format'; these settings seem to be migrated seamlessly.

Additionally there is a new "Group by" setting available in the new 'Extened settings'; this does not implement grouping by range (e.g. "age 20-30", what I was expected from the name), but mimics the functionality of the former add-on module 'Views_groupby' (aggregation based on fields in the View), meaning: it counts the number of results for a field and replaces the field value with it; the 'nodereferrer' module has implemented a similar functionality for a while, with Views3 you can count everything in your view. However, the terminology "Grouping", "Grouping field", and "Group by" might cause confusion in the future.

(2) Changed: Distinct

The former 'Basic settings > Distinct' seems to have moved into 'Extended settings > Query settings'. For me, this settings works completely different than in Views2; in my Views I get lots of duplicate items where I got exactly one with Views2.

Be extra careful when your Views rely on the "distinct" filtering, this will probably break under Views3.

(3) Changed & new: Pager

The pager settings have moved as well, and they received a couple of additional configurations options. When using views built on Views2, I got a number of weird pagers in Views3. That means that lots of Views that use the pager migh have to be reworked.

(4) Contrib/Compatibility: views_hacks

So far, most of the sub-modules from 'Views_hacks' seem to work fine with Views3.

(5) Contrib/Compatibility: views_bulk_operations

The same goes for VBO, no problems here.

(6) Contrib/Compatibility: Fusion/Skinr

I got very weird results with Views panes in Fusion/Skinr themes. Basically, the complete page layout became borked, and lots of Skinr styles don't work anymore (e.g. 25% grid units setting for Views blocks seem to have no effect in 'acquia_slate' anymore). This needs further investigation, but be careful if your layout relies on Skinr.

Comments

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

I think once a release is done, a post/document should be written somewhere which shows all new features and changes.

Bugs should be handled somewhere else, not to confuse people and more important they are somehow already documented in the issue queue.

Here is a short list changes pointed out on my presentation last year: http://cph2010.drupal.org/sessions/views-3.html

asb’s picture

asb commented

As I said, it's pretty hard to tell what's a real bug and what's simply changed functionality or stuff that can not be migrated in a sane way. E.g. in my old Views, all customized pager settings are gone and have been reset to some kind of default value of "25". This is probably no bug because the paging functionality has changed so much, and it is probably not worth (yet) another issue, but imho it should be mentioned somewhere (like in a meta-issue like this). If I'm right, something similar happened for the caching settings of Views block displays (always "no caching"); anyway, this is not consistent as the pager settings (Views page display have conserved the old caching settings), but it doesn't feel like a real bug either.

I have already spent several hours to figure out which settings went where and what has changed in which way; I believe that a changelog for users could save others a lot of time. However, you are the maintainter; if you believe that a meta-issue like this might confuse more than it can help, it's perfectly fine with me if you close the issue ("postponded documentation until after the release" ;).

PS:

A short list of changes
UI stuff
too many more to write them down
...

;-)

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

Well for example pager settings should be converted automatically, there were issues for that.
Caching didn't changed.

Well it's just the fact that the amount of time is limited.

Maybe some etherpad document makes sense because it's really easy to work on a document together

asb’s picture

asb commented
Status: Active » Fixed

The idea was not to load you with more stuff to read, just the opposite (pre-filter by the community if something actually is a bug and only post a bug report if some confirmation went in). But you're right, the issue queue probably isn't the proper place for this. A thread in a Views-related forum would be better, or maybe somethink like Etherpad, if we had it on d.o. Probably the closest match for collaborative writing on d.o are handbook pages, so closing as "fixed" and moving this issue into a preliminary handbook page, if there are no objections.

Edit: Quote from Views 2 Unofficial Tutorials: "PLEASE do not add more tutorials here -- file an issue in the Views module instead, to get your tutorials added to Advanced Help instead." Now I am really out of ideas :-(

merlinofchaos’s picture

merlinofchaos commented
Status: Fixed » Active

I agree with asb here; let's make this a documentation task. Documentation is unfortunately difficult to work on, but this is a decent place to start. Let's not discourage the contribution!

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

Just to be clear, i wanted just to suggest a place to find the changes, and a place to work on the documentation.

Let's use http://lullapad.com/TSuI1DOZiy

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

Feel free to look at the link from above, i wrote down some of the points i can remember and distinct from features of views2.

asb’s picture

asb commented

Quick update to this issue from my end. I'm not too happy with Lullapad; first, because it's external to drupal.org, second because it seems not to support image files. If we remove as well the "forum/discussion/exchange of experiences" as the pre-filtering aspect from my initial request, and make this isse a starting point for Views 3 documentation, we need images. Probably a sh**load of images because a) the terminology has some ambiguities (e.g. use of grouping/group/groups in at least four different places), b) we need to consider translated UIs, at least to some degree, and c) explaining the UI solely with words is pretty complicated.

That said, there's still the request not to post Views documentation into the handbook (as quoted in #4), and I am not allowed to embed images into handbook pages (<img src=...> seems to be filtered out). To properly resolve those conventions on drupal.org, it requires more time than I can afford (e.g. waiting for a sandbox project to be promoted for months). So I took the liberty to start the work outside of drupal.org, but at least with the capability to use images.

The first drafts are available in German:

a) Primarily user-related features (de):

b) Primarily developer-related features (de):

c) These articles are accompanied by three not yet fully structured "notes" (de):

There's also a German summary on these posts.

Also I have translated these articles into English. Please note that these are early drafts, and I am no professional translator, so native speakers might expect some laughs:

a) Primarily user-related features (en):

b) Primarily developer-related features (en):

c) Again, these articles are accompanied by three not yet fully structured "notes" (en):

And again, there's a summary on the translated posts in English.

The status of these articles is "work in progress" respectively "needs work". On my "to do" list is:

  • Review texts for clarity and structure; synchronize terminology of English UI with translation
  • Better distinguish between "documentation" and "experience" parts
  • Make screenshots with English UI
  • Make illustrative examples and/or show use cases; add screenshots that demonstrate "real" use cases
  • Figure out how to deal with the "notes" documents (to prevent the rise of "shadow" issues queues outside od drupal.org)

I need help in the following areas:

  • Check for completeness - do I have missed important new features? E.g. I tried to add pointers to relevant feature requests/issues in the Views issue queue, but there might be (much) more
  • Check for factual accuracy - do I have written bull**it?
  • (if applicable) add documentation for developers, or at least pointers to API docs; my articles don't go much beyond Daniel's notes from the Lullapad
  • (everything else that I might have forgotten)

How to continue? The articles are intended a) to get the work on Views 3 documentation started, and b) as "quarry" to break out usable parts. Commenting on the articles is open, and the content can be copied whereever it might fit (be it handbook pages, advanced help, or Lullapad). I'm open for suggestions ;)

(PS: Don't try switching translations of the links above with subdomains, it doesn't work; after wasting the better part of two days to teach Drupal proper multilinguality on subdomains with a shared files folder I have given up; either the language switcher works and images break, or images work and the language switcher has to be turned off.)

asb’s picture

asb commented
Version: 6.x-3.0-rc3 » 6.x-3.0

6.x-3.0 is out, so this becomes active again.

deverman’s picture

deverman commented

Just realized that views 3 for drupal 6 went release candidate. I had no idea that it was even being worked on. Glad to hear it was.

Are there any performance improvements with views 3 on drupal 6? Has any benchmarking been done?

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

Some of the performance improvements got in, some still needs work.

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
commented

Oh i never looked http://drupal.org/node/1347496#comment-5293400 that's an impressive list of documentation. Thanks!

Do you plan to put them into advanced help of views?

asb’s picture

asb commented

@dereine: As I wrote in #8, these pages are intended as a "quarry" to have something to work with, and to get documentation started. If parts of the pages are good enough, they can go into handbook pager, or advanced help.

However, at the moment there are too many things I don't understand myself (e.g. WSOD when updating to views-6.x-3.0; which parts of CKK/which contributed CCK modules need to be patched), so I'm a bit stuck with documenting my superior knowledge for others at the moment ;)

dagmar’s picture

dagmar
Primary language Spanish
Location Argentina
commented

Here is my own list of changes in spanish. Views 3 a fondo.

mustanggb’s picture

mustanggb commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)