A perspective is a set of subwindows (most of which are views) that are focused upon a set of tasks, such as COBOL development or debugging. Each perspective comes with a default set of views in a default layout. Any changes that you make to a perspective, such as adding or removing views or changing the layout of the views, are persisted between Eclipse sessions.
The currently selected, and other active perspectives, are shown at the top right corner of your Eclipse window. Clicking a perspective name switches to that perspective. This is quick and easy, and means that you do not need to have space taken on screen by irrelevant views at any time in the development process.
Clicking the
Open Perspective button (the icon with the twinkle,
) opens a dialog box that enables you to choose from other perspectives that you might want to open.
You can always return a perspective to its default state by right-clicking the perspective button in the right top corner of the Eclipse IDE and clicking Reset. Note that this operation cannot be undone.
If you change the layout of any of the subwindows or the content of a perspectives, the changes are retained even when you switch to another perspective, or restart eclipse. The changes will only be lost when the perspective is reset or closed.