A perspective is a specific group of views and editors in the IDE window. One or more perspectives can be accessed from a given window.
Each perspective contains one or more views and editors, each of which provides a different outlook. However, all perspectives share the same set of editors.
The title bar of the Eclipse IDE pane shows which perspective is active.
Views are comprised of editors, alternative presentations and navigation tools for manipulating the information in PDT. For example, the Navigator and the PHP Explorer views display the projects and resources that you are working with.
In addition, each View contains the various menus available to it. To open the menu for a view, click the icon at the left end of the view's title bar.
A view might appear by itself, or stacked with other views in a tabbed notebook. You can change the layout of a perspective by opening and closing views and by docking them in different positions in the Workbench window.
Views containing several tools generally place them into a toolbar. These tools affect only those items contained within that view.
Views can be active or inactive, but only one can be active at any one time. The active view is the one whose title bar is highlighted and is the target for common operations such as cut, copy and paste. The Active view also determines the contents of the status line. If an editor tab is not highlighted it indicates the editor is not active, however views may show information based on the last active editor.