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This page describes the changes between 7.x-1.x and 7.x-2.x branch of Display Suite.
Upgrade warning
Do not upgrade an existing site from 7.x-1.x to 7.x-2.x. Some functionality has been changed, especially on the template level. Both branches are supported, so stick with the same branch once you have chosen one.
UX
Menu structure overhauled.
Layouts now have preview image, including panels.
Contextual links on by default, only for nodes.
When selecting a layout, default fields will be pre filled.
Layout preview vertical tabs will always be primary, fixing the discovery problem for new users.
Fusion Apply gives you the ability to create and select specialized skins that you can choose directly from the user interface, making it easier for your site builders to directly change the look and feel of your site without touching code. The Fusion maintainers have some general suggestions for creating skins for your sites that can work in addition to the skins already available with the Fusion core theme and its subthemes.
Create a ds_layouts folder (inside your theme folder) and then create a folder whose name will be used as key for the layout. The examples below need to be put in a folder named small_left_col.
The ds_layouts/small_left_col folder can have all 3 of the files below, but only the .inc and .tpl.php files are required:
People ask us how Display Suite compares to Panels. One important fact is clear: we never created this module to be a competitor or replacement for panels, in fact, most of the maintainers don't have much experience with panels at all. Somehow, features are overlapping though.
Both are great; DS is easier out of the box but Panels is more flexible
Views arguments can be passed in Panels node variants
With panels you can create node regions in any configuration through the UI, display suite starts you off with 5 regions, good enough for me. With panels you need to create those 5 regions on your own if you want to be able to alter sizes... That's too much clicking. DS wins out with convention over configuration.
The CSS altering features in DS is much easier to deal with through the UI than with Panels. Panels can also assign CSS, but it just takes too many clicks to get to where Panels gives you a huge level of layout control and localised or globalised CSS styling.
Display Suite was born out of the Node Displays module. The first version of this module took over the display fields screen of CCK because we wanted weights and labels per build mode and an easy and simple way to give our clients the power to alter the look and feel of their nodes. It quickly became a powerful module which was able to add extra fields, build modes and had integration with views.