Adding slide numbers in the footer of beamer documents

Question

I am using the Dresden theme, which by default it gives me two lines at the bottom of the every slide, the first one containing the author name on the left and the institute name on the right, the second one containing the title of the presentation on the left and nothing else.

Is it possible to include the slide number on the right of this second line, without using \setoutertheme{infolines}?

Answer 1

Add

  \setbeamertemplate{footline}%{miniframes theme}
  {%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{upper separation line foot}
    \end{beamercolorbox}
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
      leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{author in head/foot}%
      \leavevmode{\usebeamerfont{author in head/foot}\insertshortauthor}%
      \hfill%
      {\usebeamerfont{institute in head/foot}\usebeamercolor[fg]{institute in head/foot}\insertshortinstitute}%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
      leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{title in head/foot}%
      {\usebeamerfont{title in head/foot}\insertshorttitle} \hfill     \insertframenumber%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{lower separation line foot}
    \end{beamercolorbox}
  }

after \usetheme{Dresden}. This will add a framenumber like so:

It's simply another modification to the theme. Those themes can be found in the beamer directory in the texmf-tree. Function of the beamer specific macros is documented in the beamer documentation.

Complete Code:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme{Dresden}

\title[title]{long title}
\institute[inst]{long inst}

  \setbeamertemplate{footline}%{miniframes theme}
  {%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{upper separation line foot}
    \end{beamercolorbox}
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
      leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{author in head/foot}%
      \leavevmode{\usebeamerfont{author in head/foot}\insertshortauthor}%
      \hfill%
      {\usebeamerfont{institute in head/foot}\usebeamercolor[fg]{institute in head/foot}\insertshortinstitute}%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
      leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{title in head/foot}%
      {\usebeamerfont{title in head/foot}\insertshorttitle} \hfill     \insertframenumber%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{lower separation line foot}
    \end{beamercolorbox}
  }


\begin{document}
\frame{1}
\end{document}

Answer 2

In some cases, you just need to add this line after \useoutertheme:

\setbeamertemplate{page number in head/foot}[framenumber]