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Podcast 87: Panels vs Context, The Cage Match!

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Earl Miles and Young Hahn join Dave Burns, Jeff Eaton, and Jeff Robbins to discuss the similarities and differences between Drupal's Panels and Context modules. Earl is the creator of Panels. Young is the co-creator of Context as well as Features, Spaces, and several other great modules. We open up the cage, toss everyone in, and see what happens!

Also be sure to check out David Burns' article "Assembling Pages with Drupal," which also compares and contrasts Panels and Context.

July 30, 2010 - 12:13pm
Lullabot Podcast
64:07 minutes (25.1 MB)
mono 44kHz 54Kbps (vbr)

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Comments

Martin Bavio (not verified) on July 30, 2010 - 4:35pm

Both?

So, my question is simple: can't I just use Panels and Context at the same time? Seems like they have some similarities, but also they have key differences and I really would like to use the power of both of them. Is that possible?

veriKami (not verified) on July 31, 2010 - 2:53am

?

Are Groupies Welcomed...? Context Grrlz on the board...? to dive deep and deeper... be (or touch) SuperHeros...??? ,?))

Patrick Harris (not verified) on July 31, 2010 - 5:24am

Classic podcast

Excellent work guys - really interesting! And everyone so well behaved .. no blood spilt.

Jay (not verified) on August 3, 2010 - 1:53pm

yes you can use both, my how you can use both!

Ya I love me some context and panels together. I like context for things that span multiple pages, I like panels for constructing 'layouts' of say section landing pages, node detail pages, user pages, etc.

perusio (not verified) on August 3, 2010 - 2:27pm

No need to duplicate and makt things "messy"

There's no need whatsoever to use Context if you choose Panels. Instead invest in learning Panels and CTools and see that not only fits Context bill but goes beyond.

On a different note. Why isn't the enclosure of the audio file appearing in the Drupal Planet feed? One needless redirection to donwload the file IMO.

Anonymous (not verified) on August 5, 2010 - 8:49am

mp3 download

How do I download this audio file? I want to put it on my mp3 player but when I click on the download icon I get the file to play in my browser but not option to download. :(

August 5, 2010 - 9:10am Jeff Robbins

Right click

Right click on the "download" link and select "Save as..." (or similar) from the dropdown menu.

Anonymous (not verified) on August 18, 2010 - 12:45pm

a 1000 thanks! plus i can say

a 1000 thanks! plus i can say "Jeff Robbins answered my question!" :)

Johan Falk (not verified) on August 19, 2010 - 6:48am

Best description of differences so far!

Cred to Eaton! I've never heard the alternatives-to-core-blocks functions of Panels vs. Context described so clear and compact as just after 47 minutes into the podcast.

I am most happy to quote:

[In Panels] you make a panel that lives in a place and it can get information about the details of how it is being used at a particular moment. Like, “I'm a panel that displays nodes – what node is being displayed, what are the properties of that node – I can switch and make different decisions based on that”.
Context on the other hand is not necessarily tied to any particular URL that you are creating on the website. Rather it it's about setting up rules saying that “at URLs that match this particular pattern, I'm going to carve out a particular space on my website and call that the new section” […]. Context looks at the environment and carves out that information about what's currently going on, and then things can look at that and respond to that by changing the theme or changing what block are visible […].
So, Contexts and Spaces sort of are layers that goes on top of what's going on the site and exposes more information and lets you set up rules that define areas and zones on your website, whereas Panels goes a little deeper and says “OK, I'm going to be the traffic cop for this, and along the way I'm also going to extract information about what cars I'm letting through and rerouting […], and allow people to make decisions based on that”.

If it wasn't so darn long, I'd print it on a t-shirt and wear at DrupalCon. :-)