I am currently building a presentation using LaTeX beamer. Is there a way to hide the presentation controls on the bottom of the slides? I don't use those controls, and they sometimes collide with the slide's text.
Yes, from p.223 of the Beamer guide:
To remove navigation symbols,
\usenavigationsymbolstemplate{}
Although it looks like the syntax has changed since then. This more recent page has:
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}%remove navigation symbols