How do I activate the split theme in beamer?

Question

I'd like to have the author and the title in the same line in the footline in beamer. Doing

\setbeamertemplate{footline}[split theme]

doesn't make any difference.

This did the trick:

\usepackage{beamerouterthemesplit}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[split theme]

Is this the official solution?

Minimal working example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{beamerouterthemesplit}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[split theme]
\title{TITLE}
\author{AUTHOR}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}\frametitle{Foo}bar\end{frame}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Load it this way:

\useoutertheme{split}

• \usetheme[options]{name} installs the desired presentation theme
• \useoutertheme[options]{name} does the same but only for outer themes

Similarly, there are \useinnertheme, \usecolortheme, and \usefonttheme. This is described in the beamer user guide in 15.1 Five Flavors of Themes.

If you only would like to have the footline part of the split theme, you can copy the relevant definition from beamerouterthemesplit.sty to your preamble:

\defbeamertemplate*{footline}{split theme}
{%
  \leavevmode%
  \hbox{\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.5\paperwidth,ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,leftskip=.3cm plus1fill,rightskip=.3cm]{author in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{author in head/foot}\insertshortauthor
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.5\paperwidth,ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{title in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{title in head/foot}\insertshorttitle
  \end{beamercolorbox}}%
  \vskip0pt%
}