Macos – Programmatically controlling a Cocoa Button on OSX (making it invisible and pressed)

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.

There is no separate NSPopUpMenu. The menu of an NSPopUpButton is an NSMenu.

If you want a pop-up menu without a pop-up button, you'll need to use NSPopUpButtonCell to display the menu. Of course, this is assuming you have a good reason to fake a pop-up button in an OpenGL view, instead of simply using the standard NSPopUpButton.