I noticed that I can use the select function to select a tab by the href. I digged the tabs code and copied 2 lines of the tabs select function to the remove function, and the enhancement request I made came true.

I just copied those 2 lines from the tabs(select) action to tabs(remove), this way I can delete by the href as wel as the index. Should be trivial to add those 2 lines to the next release.

if (typeof index == 'string')

index = this.$tabs.index( this.$tabs.filter('[href$=' + index + ']')[0] );

Hi, klaus.hartl!

I want to give you heads-up on this bug. It's a no-brainer, and will add a good functionality to jQuery tabs.

as of jQuery 1.6rc6, function remove begins like this:

/// when generated by themeroller, the remove() function is in line 5681 ///...

remove: function(index) {

var o = this.options, $li = this.$lis.eq(index).remove(),

$panel = this.$panels.eq(index).remove();

///...

you just have to change it to:

///...

remove: function(index) {

if (typeof index == 'string')

index = this.$tabs.index( this.$tabs.filter('[href$=' + index + ']')[0] );

var o = this.options, $li = this.$lis.eq(index).remove(),

$panel = this.$panels.eq(index).remove();

///...

And fix with this bug/enhancement.

This enables the possibility of removing a tab using the tab's href property without losing the ability to remove according to the tab index.

Please add this feature! I need this and can patch jQuery tabs every new version, but I bet it will be a nice feature for others too.

best regards

I'm considering to add that functionality, but: if so, I'd like to add that consistently to all methods where it applies.

remove, enable and disable tab by href

With this patch I think tabs is more coherent.

Just to give the heads up, since the last post is 9 months old. Will this be implemented in 1.8? Pretty please? I haven't found any mention of it being implemented on the changelogs up to 1.8rc1.

patch updated with latest version of jquery-ui. Available here  http://github.com/francois2metz/jquery-ui/commit/d00db9f0ccd81c0ec6458cabab08f66866b26ea0

Respectfully, this seems like a "no brainer" feature enhancement... and it's so trivial to add, how come it's taking so long to get this the code base? The tab component will be MUCH easier to use if this fix is in place for all applicable verbs.

placed my version of a patch on github. I tried to make it as small as possible, without sacrificing readability and maintainability, and change as little as possible. Hope you find this code acceptable:  http://github.com/BrazilianJoe/jquery-ui/blob/56a65a2571c81bd94ae8925b85f0e5621b51a1cb/ui/jquery.ui.tabs.js

Further comments on my proposed changes to jquery.ui.tabs.js:

I have created a small helper function for internal use only. It is called _getIndex(). It receives the index variable, and parses it. if it is a string, it assumes it contains a href and looks for a tab with this href in the <a> link at the tab top. If it finds no tab, it returns NaN.

Next, it checks if it is a number, and similarly sanitizes it to a valid number.

It always returns a typeof number , thus required very little change on the other functions which can benefit from this behaviour.

I have used _getIndex to implement href functionality to the methods enable, disable, select, remove and load.

Fixed in  fde8c64.