Wuerzburg Beamer Theme

I’ve received a few enquiries about the Beamer theme of my MOSC2011 slides. This beautiful, subtle theme is wuerzburg (scroll down to “LaTeX Beamer Themes”), created by Christian Gogolin.

Basic usage and the output:

\useoutertheme{wuerzburg}
\useinnertheme[outline]{chamfered}
\usecolortheme{shark}

Depending on your mood, you might want to go for a more ‘polished’ feel:

\useoutertheme[glossy]{wuerzburg}
\useinnertheme[outline,shadow]{chamfered}
\usecolortheme{shark}

See the comments in the .sty files for more options.

23 thoughts on “Wuerzburg Beamer Theme

  1. Thanks. However I have a little problem. When I compile my own slides or yours, I get an error with that theme:

    Package xkeyval Error: `realshadow' undefined in families `beamerboxes'.

    Do you have an idea ?

    TIA

  2. My OS is Max OS X 10.6.8. My TeX distribution is the MacTeX-2010 Distribution based on TeX Live 2010. My beamer version is 3.10.

    I narrowed the problem to xelatex. When I compile my simple example with pdflatex it is ok but when I try to compile it with xelatex I have the error mentionned above.

    This works with pdflatex.

    documentclass{beamer}
    usepackage{tikz}
    usepackage{pgfpages}

    useoutertheme{wuerzburg}
    useinnertheme[outline,shadow]{chamfered}
    usecolortheme{shark}

    begin{document}
    begin{frame}[fragile]{frame title}
    begin{exampleblock}{MathML}
    begin{itemize}
    item One
    item Two
    item Three
    end{itemize}
    end{exampleblock}
    end{frame}
    end{document}

    This does not with xelatex.

    documentclass[xetex]{beamer}
    usepackage{fontspec}
    usepackage{xunicode}
    usepackage{xltxtra}
    usepackage{tikz}
    usepackage{pgfpages}

    useoutertheme{wuerzburg}
    useinnertheme[outline,shadow]{chamfered}
    usecolortheme{shark}

    begin{document}
    begin{frame}[fragile]{frame title}
    begin{exampleblock}{MathML}
    begin{itemize}
    item One
    item Two
    item Three
    end{itemize}
    end{exampleblock}
    end{frame}
    end{document}

    The error is the following:

    ! Package xkeyval Error: `realshadow' undefined in families `beamerboxes'.

    See the xkeyval package documentation for explanation.
    Type H for immediate help.

    l.1 … {frame title}begin {exampleblock}{MathML}

  3. I spoke too early when I said “I narrowed the problem to xelatex”. In fact the problem arises also when I compile your presentation with pdflatex as I said before. But in my simple examples, the difference between them makes me think that using xelatex is the cause.

    I updated my entire MacTeX distribution but the problem is still present.

    So I think I will contact the author of the package.

  4. I can confirm that using documentclass[xetex]{beamer} and running xelatex on your simple example, gives the “realshadow undefined” error.

    In addition, when I prepared my MOSC slides, I was using an older version of the wuerzburg theme files which worked without problems. I'm getting the errors too if I use the new theme files; still haven't found out what triggers them.

  5. @Ludovic, for my MOSC slides, the offending packages are skak and chessboard. Remove these two packages and the slide on the chessboard example, and you're good. (I'll drop an e-mail to Christian about this later.)

    I'm still clueless about the problem with xelatex though.

  6. Your remarks are precious. I sent the first one to Christian.
    I removed the packages and commented out the frame but I still have the same problem. This is still the block environment that cause the problem.

    [2] (./intro.tex
    No file talk.toc.
    [3]

    LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape `T3/fxbjo/m/n' undefined
    (Font) using `T3/cmr/m/n' instead on input line 36.

    [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

    ! Package xkeyval Error: `realshadow' undefined in families `beamerboxes'.

    See the xkeyval package documentation for explanation.
    Type H for immediate help.

    l.76 end{frame}

  7. Hi, thanks for this blog post and the feedback! The themes have been updated today and I hope that the issues are now fixed. Could you please try the new version of the themes?

    Christian – the guy who made the themes.

  8. Wow, talk about speed! Thanks to @Ludovic and @Christian for solving the problem. I'll test the new files tonight when I get a chance.

    Also a very belated thanks again to @Christian for the great theme; I've been using your theme for most of my presentations since last year.

  9. Hi, first of all, many thanks for sharing this beautiful theme!
    I was wondering whether it is possible to increase the height of the black bar on the top of the page…

    Thank you again!

  10. @Claudio, AFAIK there's no easy way except to modify the headline template directly. You might perhaps want to e-mail the theme's author, @Christian, to see if he has plans to introduce this feature.

  11. When I try to rum a simple example following your latex code I get a result pretty much similar to yours, except for one missing detail. In your pdf the all section titles are on the top note and only the active section is highlighted. In my result I have only the title of talk and the active section (both highlighted) and nothing more. How can I get rid of the title of talk and have a result similar to yours? Also is there any way to use colors for highlighting/dehighlighting section titles?

    Thanks

  12. @Per, for the MOSC slides I was using an old version of the Wuerzburg theme files. In the latest version, only the title and the active section is shown (which is what you have too).

    You'll have to get the old version of the files for all the section titles to be displayed in the headline; you may have to contact Christian Gogolin (the author of Wuerzburg) for this.

    To change the colour of the section titles in the headline:

    setbeamercolor{section in head/foot}{fg=red}

    Hope that helps!

  13. Hi! I'm a new user in LaTeX, and I've been using LyX to learn it. I'd like to use the overlay effect (http://www.cgogolin.de/Computer.html#beamerthemes) but I cannot make it work. I simply copied and pasted the following lines just to try it, but there's an error coming out: “Illegal parameter number in definition of test”. I'm not sure if I should indent some of the lines. Is it possible for someone to help me find my mistake? I'd greatly appreciate it.

    newcommand<>{hover}[1]{uncover#2{%
    begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]%
    draw[fill,opacity=0.4] (current page.south west)
    rectangle (current page.north east);
    node at (current page.center) {#1};
    end{tikzpicture}}
    }
    #begin{frame}
    frametitle{A frame}
    Some text
    hover<2>{
    begin{minipage}{0.8linewidth}
    begin{block}{A block hovering above the slide}
    I am visible on slide two.
    end{block}
    end{minipage}
    }
    end{frame}

    ​Thanks!

  14. Hi everyone! I've two questions:

    1) Can I change the bullet types? In powerdot, I usually use this:

    deflabelitemi{smallding{85}}
    deflabelitemii{smallding{254}}

    But here it does not work.

    2) When passing from slide 9 to 10, the numbering becomes unreadable. Basically, the 10 moves up and cannot be read. And this continues for the rest of the slides. Is this a bug?

    Thanks!

  15. 1) The itemize environment is defined differently in beamer, so you'll have to use the following to change the bullets:

    setbeamertemplate{itemize item}{smallding{85}}
    setbeamertemplate{itemize subitem}{smallding{254}}

    2) Hmm, I can't reproduce this error.

  16. 1) Great! Thanks a lot for these!

    2) Hmm, I'l try to fix it. But, in any case, is it possible to a) move the numbering to the top right corner of the slides, or b) simply omit it so that it doesn't appear?

    Thanks a lot for the help! This website has been like an oasis in the vastness of internet.

  17. 2. a) Try useoutertheme[nofootline]{wuerzburg}, but you may still have the same problem with the numbers.

    2. b) In your beamerouterthemewuerzburg.sty, look for the line

    defbeamertemplate*{footline}{wuerzburg theme}

    From there, scroll down a bit, and comment out the line

    insertframenumber{} / inserttotalframenumber hspace*{3.5ex}

    (There are two occurrences of it)

    Glad the site helped 🙂

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