The bounds of an UIView is the rectangle, expressed as a location (x,y) and size (width,height) relative to its own coordinate system (0,0).
The frame of an UIView is the rectangle, expressed as a location (x,y) and size (width,height) relative to the superview it is contained within.
So, imagine a view that has a size of 100x100 (width x height) positioned at 25,25 (x,y) of its superview. The following code prints out this view's bounds and frame:
// This method is in the view controller of the superview
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
NSLog(@"bounds.origin.x: %f", label.bounds.origin.x);
NSLog(@"bounds.origin.y: %f", label.bounds.origin.y);
NSLog(@"bounds.size.width: %f", label.bounds.size.width);
NSLog(@"bounds.size.height: %f", label.bounds.size.height);
NSLog(@"frame.origin.x: %f", label.frame.origin.x);
NSLog(@"frame.origin.y: %f", label.frame.origin.y);
NSLog(@"frame.size.width: %f", label.frame.size.width);
NSLog(@"frame.size.height: %f", label.frame.size.height);
}
And the output of this code is:
bounds.origin.x: 0
bounds.origin.y: 0
bounds.size.width: 100
bounds.size.height: 100
frame.origin.x: 25
frame.origin.y: 25
frame.size.width: 100
frame.size.height: 100
So, we can see that in both cases, the width and the height of the view is the same regardless of whether we are looking at the bounds or frame. What is different is the x,y positioning of the view. In the case of the bounds, the x and y coordinates are at 0,0 as these coordinates are relative to the view itself. However, the frame x and y coordinates are relative to the position of the view within the parent view (which earlier we said was at 25,25).
There is also a great presentation that covers UIViews. See slides 1-20 which not only explain the difference between frames and bounds but also show visual examples.
Best Solution
Marco's answer above is correct, but just to expand on the question of "under what context"...
frame - this is the property you most often use for normal iPhone applications. most controls will be laid out relative to the "containing" control so the frame.origin will directly correspond to where the control needs to display, and frame.size will determine how big to make the control.
center - this is the property you will likely focus on for sprite based games and animations where movement or scaling may occur. By default animation and rotation will be based on the center of the UIView. It rarely makes sense to try and manage such objects by the frame property.
bounds - this property is not a positioning property, but defines the drawable area of the UIView "relative" to the frame. By default this property is usually (0, 0, width, height). Changing this property will allow you to draw outside of the frame or restrict drawing to a smaller area within the frame. A good discussion of this can be found at the link below. It is uncommon for this property to be manipulated unless there is specific need to adjust the drawing region. The only exception is that most programs will use the
[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]on startup to determine the visible area for the application and setup their initial UIView's frame accordingly.Why is there an frame rectangle and an bounds rectangle in an UIView?
Hopefully this helps clarify the circumstances where each property might get used.