Defining display modes

Drupal’s display modes feature takes a different approach to creating displays and is complementary to Views. Conventionally, this feature starts with being able to control display settings for a content-type rendering on a page. However, additional display modes can be configured to display the same content in different ways as needed.

Overview

Display modes look at displays tied to a content type. A content type defines structured content. The same node within a content type can be displayed in different ways. Each display may be able to fine-tune which fields are displayed, labels, formats of field values, ordering of fields, and more. A content type can have as many display modes as needed to address any desired use case. Each content type can select a default display mode, which is most commonly used for rendering nodes.

This may be confusing concerning Views, given Views also allows for the building of displays. Display modes only define...