12  The title page

Beamer provides an easy way to make a title page for your presentation. The file titlepage-demo.tex, the content of which is shown below, defines a titlepage and a regular slide.

% titlepage-demo.tex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{umbc4}

% items enclosed in square brackets are optional; explanation below
\title[A short proof]{A short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem}
\subtitle[Errors]{Estimation of numerical errors}
\author[R. Rostamian]{Rouben Rostamian}
\institute[UMBC]{
  Department of Mathematics and Statistics\\
  University of Maryland, Baltimore County\\
  Baltimore, Maryland 21250\\[1ex]
  \texttt{rostamian@umbc.edu}
}
\date[November 2004]{November 26, 2004}

\begin{document}

%--- the titlepage frame -------------------------%
\begin{frame}[plain]
  \titlepage
\end{frame}

%--- the presentation begins here ----------------%
\begin{frame}{Overview}
  Overview of the material.
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Here are the results:

Observe that some of the information provided on titlepage, such title, author, etc., also appears in the footline of the subsequent slide.

Titlepage elements

Titlepage elements are specified through the commands \title, \subtitle, \author, \institute, \date.

The data given to these commands appears not only in the title page, but also in the footline section of the subsequent slides (see the image above).

Each titlepage element can be specified using a single argument, as in:

\title{University of Maryland, Baltimore County} 

or using two arguments, as in:

\title[UMBC]{University of Maryland, Baltimore County}. 

The optional argument, UMBC (in square brackets) is the short form of the institute’s name.

The long forms of titlepage elements are used on the title page. The short forms of titlepage elements are used in the footers of the subsequent slides.

Please note that if a short form is not provided, then the long form will be used in the footers. If long forms are too long, then footers may get garbled.

About the [plain] qualifier

In the sample source code shown above, note the [plain] qualifier in the line

\begin{frame}[plain] 

that generates the titlepage.

Without that qualifier, the title page would have been drawn with header and footer decorations, like all other slides. The [plain] qualifier suppresses the drawing of these decorations. Compare the two images shown on top of this page.

Judge for yourself if showing such decorations is appropriate for a title page.

In general, the [plain] qualifier may be used on any frame to suppress the drawing of frame decorations on that frame.