What does Contextual Filters (in Views) serve for? I was playing with filtering content using views but seems I can't make them work the way I want : to display the articles of an edition based on the latest issue no. (or latest issue date) on the frontpage. I figure out this can be done using contextual filter but don't know how.

My content types are: 

editions: edition_no, edition_date, edition_title
article: title, body, edition_no.

Many thanks for help.
Contextual filters in Views 3 replaces the 'Arguments' of Views 2.

It's best used with paths as outlined in this video: http://nodeone.se/blogg/learn-views-with-nodeone-part-19-contextual-filters-with-paths.

By the sounds of it, the filtering of your view could do the same job.