Can I have framed blocks in beamer?

Question

Is there a simple way to have the body of a block environment in beamer to have a frame around it, rather than having a background colour? I tried putting a \fbox inside the block, but it just wrote off the side of the slide... I tried putting the fbox outside the block environment, but that looks mega ugly.

Ideally, I'd like to do this through defining a beamer template with \setbeamertemplate{blocks}{framed} or something like this. So that colour themes and blocks inside columns work nicely.

I looked up the definition of beamercolorbox and it's not pretty...

Answer 1

With some serious butchering of beamerbaseboxes.aux I managed to get the following [framed] template for beamer boxes. For easier digestibility, I'll split the code into several chunks and add some comments inbetween. You'll probably want to move some parts to a .sty file.

It all starts, innocently, with

\documentclass{beamer}

Next, I took the code from \beamerboxesrounded, removed the shadow part, changed the drawinging commands a bit and changed some \vskips. First this sets up some colors. Then it sets the title in a minipage (that is saved to a box). Then it draws around the title. Finally it starts a minipage for the main content. The rest of the code glues things together.

\makeatletter
\newcommand\beamerboxesframed[2][]{%
  \global\let\beamer@firstlineitemizeunskip=\relax%
  \vbox\bgroup%
  \setkeys{beamerboxes}{upper=block title,lower=block body,width=\textwidth}%
  \setkeys{beamerboxes}{#1}%
  {%
    \usebeamercolor{\bmb@lower}%
    \globalcolorstrue%
    \colorlet{lower.bg}{bg}%
  }%
  {%
    \usebeamercolor{\bmb@upper}%
    \globalcolorstrue%
    \colorlet{upper.bg}{bg}%
  }%
  %
  % Typeset head
  %
  \vskip4bp
  \setbox\bmb@box=\hbox{%
    \begin{minipage}[b]{\bmb@width}%
      \usebeamercolor[fg]{\bmb@upper}%
      #2%
    \end{minipage}}%
  \ifdim\wd\bmb@box=0pt%
    \setbox\bmb@box=\hbox{}%
    \ht\bmb@box=0pt%
    \bmb@prevheight=-4.5pt%
  \else%
    \wd\bmb@box=\bmb@width%
    \bmb@temp=\dp\bmb@box%
    \ifdim\bmb@temp<1.5pt%
      \bmb@temp=1.5pt%
    \fi%
    \setbox\bmb@box=\hbox{\raise\bmb@temp\hbox{\box\bmb@box}}%
    \dp\bmb@box=0pt%
    \bmb@prevheight=\ht\bmb@box%
  \fi%
  \bmb@temp=\bmb@width%
  \bmb@dima=\bmb@temp\advance\bmb@dima by2.2bp%
  \bmb@dimb=\bmb@temp\advance\bmb@dimb by4bp%
  \hbox{%
    \begin{pgfpicture}{0bp}{+-\ht\bmb@box}{0bp}{+-\ht\bmb@box}
      \ifdim\wd\bmb@box=0pt%
        \color{lower.bg}%
      \else%
        \color{upper.bg}%
      \fi%
      \pgfpathqmoveto{-4bp}{-1bp}
      \pgfpathqcurveto{-4bp}{1.2bp}{-2.2bp}{3bp}{0bp}{3bp}
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{\bmb@temp}{3bp}}
      \pgfpathcurveto%
      {\pgfpoint{\bmb@dima}{3bp}}%
      {\pgfpoint{\bmb@dimb}{1.2bp}}%
      {\pgfpoint{\bmb@dimb}{-1bp}}%
      \bmb@dima=-\ht\bmb@box%
      \advance\bmb@dima by-2pt%
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{\bmb@dimb}{\bmb@dima}}
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{-4bp}{\bmb@dima}}
      \pgfpathclose
      \pgfsetstrokecolor{black}\pgfusepath{stroke, fill}
    \end{pgfpicture}%
    \copy\bmb@box%
  }%
  \nointerlineskip%
  \ifdim\wd\bmb@box=0pt
  \else
    \vskip2.4pt%
  \fi%
  \nointerlineskip%
  \setbox\bmb@colorbox=\hbox{{\pgfpicturetrue\pgfsetcolor{lower.bg}}}%
  \setbox\bmb@box=\hbox\bgroup\begin{minipage}[b]{\bmb@width}%
    \vskip2pt%
    \usebeamercolor[fg]{\bmb@lower}%
    \colorlet{beamerstructure}{upper.bg}%
    \colorlet{structure}{upper.bg}%
    %\color{.}%
}

The end command ends the \minipage of the content and draws a line around it (not drawing on the top). Again I removed all the code for the shadow and changed the drawing code slightly.

\def\endbeamerboxesframed{%
  \end{minipage}\egroup%
  \wd\bmb@box=\bmb@width%
  \bmb@temp=\dp\bmb@box%
  \advance\bmb@temp by.5pt%
  \setbox\bmb@box=\hbox{\raise\bmb@temp\hbox{\box\bmb@box}}%
  \dp\bmb@box=0pt%
  \bmb@temp=\wd\bmb@box%
  \bmb@dima=\bmb@temp\advance\bmb@dima by2.2bp%
  \bmb@dimb=\bmb@temp\advance\bmb@dimb by4bp%
  \hbox{%
    \begin{pgfpicture}{0bp}{0bp}{0bp}{0bp}
      \unhbox\bmb@colorbox%
      \pgfpathmoveto{\pgfpoint{-4bp}{\ht\bmb@box}}
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{-4bp}{1bp}}
      \pgfpathqcurveto{-4bp}{-1.2bp}{-2.2bp}{-3bp}{0bp}{-3bp}
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{\the\bmb@temp}{-3bp}}
      \pgfpathcurveto%
      {\pgfpoint{\the\bmb@dima}{-3bp}}%
      {\pgfpoint{\the\bmb@dimb}{-1.2bp}}%
      {\pgfpoint{\the\bmb@dimb}{1bp}}%
      {
      \bmb@dima=\ht\bmb@box%
      \pgfpathlineto{\pgfpoint{\bmb@dimb}{\bmb@dima}}
      \pgfsetstrokecolor{black}\pgfusepath{stroke, fill}
      }
    \end{pgfpicture}%
    \box\bmb@box%
  }%
  \vskip2bp%
  \egroup% of \vbox\bgroup
}
\makeatother

Having defined the commands that do the actual drawing work, we need to set up the template. The following code is almost verbatim from beamerbaseauxtemplates.sty, only changing rounded to framed and removing shadow=false. If you want to, you can also remove the \vskip\smallskipamount (as the boxes are lighter, they can probably be placed closer together)

\defbeamertemplateparent{blocks}[framed]{block begin,block end,%
  block alerted begin,block alerted end,%
  block example begin,block example end}[1][]
{[#1]}

\defbeamertemplate{block begin}{framed}[1][]
{
  \par\vskip\medskipamount%
  \begin{beamerboxesframed}[upper=block title,lower=block body,#1]%
    {\raggedright\usebeamerfont*{block title}\insertblocktitle}%
    \raggedright%
    \usebeamerfont{block body}%
}
\defbeamertemplate{block end}{framed}[1][]
{\end{beamerboxesframed}\vskip\smallskipamount}

\defbeamertemplate{block alerted begin}{framed}[1][]
{
  \par\vskip\medskipamount%
  \begin{beamerboxesframed}[upper=block title alerted,lower=block body alerted,#1]%
    {\raggedright\usebeamerfont*{block title alerted}\insertblocktitle}%
    \raggedright%
    \usebeamerfont{block body alerted}%
}%
\defbeamertemplate{block alerted end}{framed}[1][]
{\end{beamerboxesframed}\vskip\smallskipamount}

\defbeamertemplate{block example begin}{framed}[1][]
{
  \par\vskip\medskipamount%
  \begin{beamerboxesframed}[upper=block title example,lower=block body example,#1]
    {\raggedright\usebeamerfont*{block title example}\insertblocktitle}%
    \raggedright%
    \usebeamerfont{block body alerted}%
}%
\defbeamertemplate{block example end}{framed}[1][]
{\end{beamerboxesframed}\vskip\smallskipamount}

Now we only have to select the template

\setbeamertemplate{blocks}[framed]

You might want to change some styling (depending on your theme, the defaults might look fine). Here is what I used for the example image.

\setbeamercolor{block title}{fg=black,bg=gray!40}
\setbeamercolor{block body}{fg=black,bg=gray!10}
\setbeamercolor{block title alerted}{fg=red,bg=gray!40}
\setbeamercolor{block title example}{fg=black,bg=green!20}
\setbeamercolor{block body example}{fg=black,bg=green!5}
\setbeamerfont{block title}{series=\bfseries}

An example:

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
    \begin{block}{title}
        test

        a second line
    \end{block}

    \begin{block}{}
        test without title
    \end{block}

    \begin{alertblock}{title}
        test
    \end{alertblock}

    \begin{Example}
        test
    \end{Example}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Answer 2

From its announcement in CTAN list (December, 2011)

tcolorbox provides an environment for colored and framed text boxes with a heading line. Optionally, such a box can be splitted in an upper and a lower part. The package tcolorbox can be used for the setting of LaTeX examples where one part of the box displays the source code and the other part shows the output. Another common use case is the setting of theorems. The package supports saving and reuse of source code and text parts.

Next there is an example using it inside beamer

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[listings,theorems]{tcolorbox}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[fragile]
\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=blue!5,colframe=blue!75!black,title=My title]
  My box with my title.
\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcblisting}{colback=red!5,colframe=red!75!black}
\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=blue!5,colframe=blue!75!black,title=My title]
  My box with my title.
\end{tcolorbox}
\end{tcblisting}

\end{frame}
\end{document}

UPDATE:

I've played a little bit more with tcolorbox and also read the manual, so I discovered that it's possible to use TiKZ .styles. This way is easy to create groups of parameters (options) and reuse them. Next code tries to reproduce Caramdir's examples.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{tcolorbox}

% These options will be applied to all `tcolorboxes`
\tcbset{%
    noparskip,
    colback=gray!10, %background color of the box
    colframe=gray!40, %color of frame and title background
    coltext=black, %color of body text
    coltitle=black, %color of title text 
    fonttitle=\bfseries,
    alerted/.style={coltitle=red, 
                     colframe=gray!40},
    example/.style={coltitle=black, 
                     colframe=green!20,             
                     colback=green!5},
    }

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=title]
  test

  a second line
\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcolorbox}
  test without title.
\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcolorbox}[alerted,title=title]
  test
\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcolorbox}[example,title=Example]
  test
\end{tcolorbox}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

The result is shown in next figure. With Caramdir's solution the frame border is always black and different from title background color. With tcolorbox frame border and title background use same color. I think skins library (see manual) could solve this problem(?).

Answer 3

I seized the ideas and answers of @Caramdir and @Ignasi to create a block template with tcolorbox. Add the following code to your beamer theme file (e.g., beamerthemeFramedBoxes.sty):

\usepackage{tcolorbox}

\defbeamertemplateparent{blocks}[framed]{block begin,block end}[1][]
{[#1]}

\defbeamertemplate{block begin}{framed}[1][]
{
  \begin{tcolorbox}[%
    colback=white,%
    colframe=gray, arc=0mm]%
    {\vskip\smallskipamount%
      \raggedright\usebeamerfont*{block title}%
      \usebeamercolor[fg]{title}\insertblocktitle}%
    \vskip\smallskipamount%
    \raggedright%
    \usebeamerfont{block body}%
  }

\defbeamertemplate{block end}{framed}[1][] {\end{tcolorbox}}

\setbeamertemplate{blocks}[framed]

This creates a block template called framed that has framed borders. It does not create alert and example block templates and it does not use the background colors of beamer yet and it does not correctly set the title. All of this could be implemented easily though, if really needed.

Answer 4

Here's a proof of concept for an alternative solution that doesn't involve quite as much hackery as Caramdir's solution did.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{mdframed}
\newenvironment{framedblock}[1]{%
  \begin{mdframed}[skipbelow=-1pt]
    #1
  \end{mdframed}
  \begin{mdframed}[skipabove=0pt]
}{
\end{mdframed}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{framedblock}{Title}
 This block is framed
\end{framedblock}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

It doesn't use beamer's block interface, but it should be possible to make it use beamer colours, with a little fiddling...

The spacing is currently suboptimal. I shall play with that later. Also, mdframed can do rounded corners, so I'll play with that too...

Answer 5

You could use the new tcolorbox inner theme (https://www.ctan.org/pkg/beamertheme-tcolorbox ) as starting point and add a borderline to it:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Warsaw}
\useinnertheme{tcolorbox}
\makeatletter
\tcbset{
  boxrule=1pt,
  borderline={1.5pt}{0pt}{beamer@tcb@titlebg},
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{block}{title}
content...
\end{block}
\end{frame}
\end{document}