View Modes are a core feature of Drupal 7 entities that most users don't give too much thought to, even though they use them all the time. This is a shame because View Modes are an extraordinarily powerful tool for streamlining the theming and development of your site and ensuring consistency of output for your content. View Modes give the themer the ability to show the same content in many different contexts and with the right display for each situation. Through smart use of View Modes, a themer can avoid having the huge stack of node templates and Views displays that we're used to. In this session, attendees will learn what a View Mode is and how to create custom View Modes both in code and with contributed modules. We'll demonstrate how to set and export display settings for all of your View Modes. We will also spend time looking at the design strategies and types of site elements that View Modes are well suited for. We'll will see how View Modes can change the way you template your nodes, lay out your content, and interact with developers, all for the better.

Questions answered by this session:
What is a View Mode, and how do I make my own?
How do I export my View Modes to code?
How can View Modes improve my theming practices and collaboration with developers?
What design strategies are View Modes particularly well-suited for?
What other core features and contrib modules do View Modes work well with?