List View Web Part Toolbar Types in SharePoint 2010

When adding a List View Web Part to your pages in SharePoint 2007, you had 3 options:

• Full Toolbar
  • Gave you the library controls on a toolbar above your headers and list items, but no “Add new document” or “Add new list item” link below your data, because it was available in the toolbar above.
    
• Summary Toolbar
  • Gave you the “Add new document” link below your data
    
• No Toolbar
  • Nothing!

In SharePoint 2010, things are slightly different. Let’s take a look at our options, as well as how they are rendered.

• Full Toolbar
  • Just appears to give us the “Add Document” link. No toolbar being shown. Odd.
    
• Summary Toolbar
  • The exact same thing as the “Full Toolbar”. Odd, again.
    
• No Toolbar
  • Works as advertised.
    
• Show Toolbar
  • The new option on the block… This option now acts like the old “Full Toolbar” used to.
    

My big question here is, why leave the “Full Toolbar” option, if it is now exactly the same as the Summary Toolbar? My guess would be for backwards compatibility. Also, if you hadn’t noticed – the ribbon in 2010 also takes the place of some of these options. Go ahead and click into your webpart somewhere, you’ll notice you get the contextual ribbon options for the list and list items, negating the need for the “Full Toolbar” option.

Hope this helps map out what these options are. I had not paid much attention to these as of yet, until it was brought up by a client recently.