Contextual links

I have been working with Drupal since its 6th release, and one of the reasons I love it is due to Views. In all the websites I've built using Drupal, Views make up 80% of the site structure. I am familiar with what each View does and where to find it. However, I have always been puzzled by the presence of direct edit links for both Views and blocks in the theme region. At first, I thought it was related to the version of Views, but later on, I realized that this was not the case. Despite my…