jQuery Tabs Tutorial

Dec 23rd, 2011  »  13 comments

Tabs are easy to implement and can be built to work with your existing markup. This guide will walk through the process.

Writing the Markup

Lets start by writing our markup as if our visitor doesn't even have JavaScript enabled. Even if you do not wish to support users without JavaScript, it is still a good pattern to follow to exercise separation of concerns.

<ul class='tabs'>
    <li><a href='#tab1'>Tab 1</a></li>
    <li><a href='#tab2'>Tab 2</a></li>
    <li><a href='#tab3'>Tab 3</a></li>
</ul>
<div id='tab1'>
    <p>Hi, this is the first tab.</p>
</div>
<div id='tab2'>
    <p>This is the 2nd tab.</p>
</div>
<div id='tab3'>
    <p>And this is the 3rd tab.</p>
</div>

I used fragment identifiers (#tab1, #tab2, #tab3) for the href values in the navigation. Each element containing a tab's content is given an ID that corresponds to a fragment identifier. This way the links are semantic and continue to be functional even if the visitor has JavaScript disabled.

A nice side effect of using only a fragment identifier for the href value is that retrieving the value through jQuery's .attr() method will give us the exact selector we need to query the document for that tab's content, ie. $('ul.tabs a').attr('href') will return #tab1.

Writing the jQuery

Rather than describing the code, I am just going to include it with comments that explain each step.

$('ul.tabs').each(function(){
    // For each set of tabs, we want to keep track of
    // which tab is active and it's associated content
    var $active, $content, $links = $(this).find('a');

    // Use the first link as the initial active tab
    $active = $links.first().addClass('active');
    $content = $($active.attr('href'));

    // Hide the remaining content
    $links.not(':first').each(function () {
        $($(this).attr('href')).hide();
    });

    // Bind the click event handler
    $(this).on('click', 'a', function(e){
        // Make the old tab inactive.
        $active.removeClass('active');
        $content.hide();

        // Update the variables with the new link and content
        $active = $(this);
        $content = $($(this).attr('href'));

        // Make the tab active.
        $active.addClass('active');
        $content.show();

        // Prevent the anchor's default click action
        e.preventDefault();
    });
});

See the complete document. I used jQuery's .on() method for event binding, so be sure to use jQuery 1.7 or higher.

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Comments

Andy Lake5 months agoReply

Nice up to date tutorial, thanks

bhavik5 months agoReply

Neat and Clean CODE

Grawl3 months agoReply

Using it in My site's code. Simple and effective, best solution for tabs!

Michaelea3 months agoReply

Beauty Jack. Thank you much. As Grawl says "...Simple.... best solution..." Here below, for anyone interested (any more), is one of the originals on this theme. http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/how-to-create-a-slick-tabbed-content-area/#more-13

VC3 months agoReply

What if I wanted to start with an arbitrary, non-first tab? How would I change the code to start with a different tab based off of its class, such as "current"? I have a series of tabs with years on them and want the page to start with this year, but keep previous years available to see.

Jack3 months agoReply

I don't want to get into changing the script to include more features as it's just a simple learning demo. Besides expanding the script, you could just call the click event on whatever tab you wanted to be active. Example:

$('.current').click();

Marconius3 months agoReply

Awesome! Thanks. @VC ... just off the top of my head, could you just use the class selector?

$active = $(".current").addClass('active');

sarvesh nallamilli3 months agoReply

Very cool demonstration. Keep posting :)

Anonymous3 months agoReply

nice tut

Boobos2 months agoReply

Awesome tutorial, easy and simple but what about tab linking I don't see this feature work ??!! And Thank you for this great tut ;)

Antonia month agoReply

This is a really nice tuto. Is it possible to link one of the tabs from another page? Thanks.

Yaldaram.coma month agoReply

Very nice :)

Niyi onia month agoReply

very nice tutorial

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