Sometimes I want an element on a frame to change in steps.
I do this by
\only<2>{
...
}
\only<3>{
...
}
etc.
But this causes the frame to jump due to different sizes of the included content.
How can this be avoided?
[Tex/LaTex] Avoiding jumping frames in beamer
beameroverlayspositioning
Related Solutions
As you suggested, you can succeed with some counter manipulation. I added a new section 'traffic jam', so that you can see that everything is working as expected.
Here is your modified code, leading to the results shown above:
\documentclass{beamer}
%using my default theme
\usepackage{beamerthemesplit}
\usetheme{Dresden}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number]
\usecolortheme{beaver}
\usefonttheme{professionalfonts}
\useoutertheme{shadow}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Overview}
\tableofcontents
\end{frame}
\section{cars}
% Save the section counter in the cars section
\newcounter{carscounter}\setcounter{carscounter}{\thesection}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{there are so many different cars}
\begin{itemize}
\item Transmissions
\item Motors
\item Drive shafts
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\section{motors}
% Save the section counter in the motors section
\newcounter{motorscounter}\setcounter{motorscounter}{\thesection}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{and motors are also interesting}
\begin{itemize}
\item big motor
\item small motor
\item tiny motor
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}
% Set section counter to the proviously stored value
\setcounter{section}{\value{carscounter}}
\frametitle{coming back to cars}
\begin{itemize}
\item Cars need fuel
\item Cars are expensive
\item Cars bring us from a to be
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{further things}
\begin{itemize}
\item Some more car things
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
% Before adding the next section, we have to set the counter accordingly, so that everything is in correct order again (otherwise the top view panel will go crazy)
\setcounter{section}{\value{motorscounter}}
\section{traffic jams}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{one major problem of cars are traffic jams}
\begin{itemize}
\item long traffic jams
\item short traffic jams
\item and, of course, boring ones
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
I would not use formatting commands inside macros such as \frametitle, as this is a task for templates. To simply change the colour, you could change the beamercolor locally for the frame.
In case you want to do more complex changes, define your own frametitle template, examples can be found in the outer themes.
\documentclass[]{beamer}
\setbeamercolor{structure}{fg=red}
\setbeamercolor{myOwnColorForTheOverviewFrameTitle}{fg=blue}
\begin{document}
{
\setbeamercolor{frametitle}{parent=myOwnColorForTheOverviewFrameTitle}
\begin{frame}[plain]
\frametitle{Overview}
\tableofcontents
\end{frame}
}
\section{Section 1}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Frame Title 1}
Test
\end{frame}
\section{Section 2}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Frame Title 2}
Test
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Best Answer
Wrap your code fragment inside the
overlayareaenvironment.