Link to element IDs inside a jQuery tabs – read “Stateless”

Submitted by Derick Ng on 27 April 2011 - 5:48am

I recently implemented JQuery's Tabs feature into a site I am building for a client.  My first though was "wow, that was easy."  And then the usability issues starting making themselves apparent.  I like stateless web. Everything is linkable and bookmarkable, and once you have something the way you want, you should be able to share it with nothing more then the unique and repeatable url.

WHat do I mean by usability issues, let me explain with a few scenarios.
Problems
Problem 1: Switching tabs is not reflected by the URL, making the page stateful
Ugh, we hate stateful web sites!

Your visitor lands on PageA that has 3 tabs: Main content, Dynamic Map, and User comments.
To see the maps, user clicks on "Tab2". (URL remains unchanged)
User wants to share map, and sends link to a friend,...

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