aptitude allows you to work with several “views” at once. A “view” (sometimes called a “screen”) is simply something that can appear in the area of the screen below the menu bar. The most common view is the package list, but download views are also common.
When several views are open at once, you can close the current view using q). To switch to the next or previous view, use -> (F6) and -> (F7); you can also find a list of all active views in the Views menu.
-> (Some commands (for instance, viewing information about a package) will create new views automatically; you can also explicitly create a new view using
-> or -> .