Setting the active tab using href

The tabs widget allows the developer to programmatically set the active tab. This can be done by passing a zero-based index value to the active option. This option can be set in the tabs constructor, which tells the widget which tab to activate by default, or it can be set afterwards, potentially changing the active tab. Changing the active tab using this option is essentially the same thing as a user clicking on a tab button to activate the panel. However, we can improve on this interface by allowing developers using the tabs widget to pass an href value instead of an index. This way, you don't have to remember the ordering of the tabs—which number represents which link, and so on.

How to do it...

Let's first set up the HTML used in this demonstration as the foundation of the tabs widget.

<div id="tabs">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="#tab1">Tab 1</a></li>
        <li><a href="#tab2">Tab 2</a></li&gt...