What is the name of the 8 white squares surrounding resizable views?

Question

I came across this annoying moment while writing a how-to article and realized I didn't know the name of those white squares that surround views.

Here some images for clarification.

Windows PowerPoint:

Mac Xcode:

Solution 1

Terms for these may vary from platform to platform, but on the Mac I believe they're called the "handles" on the "selection box"

Solution 2

I would refine Spiff’s answer a bit and say they are the resize handles, since one typically uses them to resize the object of interest.

Per duplode's comment, this appears to be the nomenclature used by Microsoft – see, e.g., "Use resize and rotation handles" on MSDN.

Solution 3

I typically call them "control points".

Here are some web references that use similar terminology.

Apple's Motion 4 Manual

you can also use the onscreen control points to resize the rectangle

An article on resizing graphics in CS5

In the default scaling mode, the selection scales graphic elements from the control point opposite the one you’re dragging.

From Microsoft Office 2003 in 10 Simple Steps or Less By Michael Desmond

When you hover your mouse cursor over a cell or table edge, the boundary turns blue, indicating a layout area. Click this boundary and control points appear.... You can click and drag these points to resize....

I agree with the comment by Steve Rindsberg that mentioned that the preferred terminology might vary by application and will note that Microsoft's documentation on Powerpoint appears to use control point for Bezier curves and resize handle (as suggested by hBy2Py) for resizing.

Solution 4

To me theses are anchors of the bounding box.

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Comments

[Admin]

Possibly relevant: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742466.as‌​px

[Steve Rindsberg]

What spiff said. Or "selection handles".

[Adrian]

Pretty much everywhere I've seen them named, they're called handles (sometimes <thing> handles like "selection handles" but always some kind of handles).

[Eyal]

They were originally called "grabber handles" on the Mac. I'm not sure if this terminology has changed or not. Those of us who learned the tech many years ago still refer to them as "grabber handles", but "selection handles" or "resize handles" sounds much more dignified. I don't like just "handles", because the word is too overloaded and thus ambiguous. Don't use it unless its very clear from context what you're referring to.

[Admin]

This is correct. It is definitely called the bounding box, especially in Adobe software (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop).

[hBy2Py]

@FighterJet Disagree. The individual little white boxes at the corners and the centers of the edges are not themselves the bounding box, though they are components of the bounding box. The body of the question is vague; I've suggested an edit.

[iXô]

Exactly, the bounding box is the dashed line that is linking the smalls boxes that are in the corner and in the middle of theses lines.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Each application may have its own terminology for these things. And in the context of the original question (PowerPoint, X-code), what Adobe calls it isn't relevant.

[jamesdlin]

Disagree. "Anchor" can meet something entirely different, especially if the handles are used to rotate the object.

[Admin]

@Steve: PowerPoint and X-code are just examples.

[Admin]

"Anchors" is not quite right either—I would give that label to points on a path.

[duplode]

Spotted in the wild at MSDN (in particular, note the contrast with "rotation handles").

[Hashim Aziz]

"...but always some kind of handles." Calling them love handles from now on.

[Steve Rindsberg]

@FighterJet: Possibly. But as OP mentioned writing a how to article and tagged the post with those specific apps, it doesn't seem reasonable to apply some other app's terminology.

[kapex]

I've seen the term "anchor" already used in some graphics libraries for different thing: 1) to describe points (usually on the bounding box) where lines may be connected to an element 2) as "anchor point" which is the center around which the element can be rotated. It would be confusing to name the handles shown in the question "anchors" too.

[hBy2Py]

Powerpoint definitely has "anchors" for 2-D shapes, to which the special 'connector' line shapes can attach and to which the connectors stay attached when the 2-D shape is repositioned/resized. They're marked by little red boxes when one is moving the endpoint of a connector -- definitely not the same thing as described by OP.

[Chris H]

This may be true in some situations, but in graphics applications these are very definitely handles as control points refers to a way of constructing Bezier curves

[Joshua Drake]

I think this would have been better as a comment on @iXô's answer.