The Column Details
tab provides an
interface for setting the parameters of a column without using
the table interface of the column editor.
All settings that are available in the Column Editor are also available in the Column Details tab, and in addition you can also configure the column character set and column default collation from the Column Details tab.
Depending upon circumstances one or the other of these views may be more convenient. However, changing the data type in the tabular view is especially easy because a drop-down list shows all available data types.