JQuery UI Tabs Causing Screen to "Jump"

If you have something along these lines:

<a href="#" onclick="activateTab('tab1');">Tab 1</a>

Try adding return false; after the tab activation command:

<a href="#" onclick="activateTab('tab1'); return false;">Tab 1</a>

My guess is that you are animating your tab transitions? I am having the same problem, where the page scroll jumps back to the top with every click.

I found this in the jquery source:

 // Show a tab, animation prevents browser scrolling to fragment,

Sure enough, if I have this:

$('.tab_container > ul').tabs();    
$('.tab_container > ul').tabs({ fx: { height: 'toggle', opacity: 'toggle', duration: 'fast' } });

my code jumps to the top and is annoying (but there's animation). If I change that to this:

$('.tab_container > ul').tabs();    
//$('.tab_container > ul').tabs({ fx: { height: 'toggle', opacity: 'toggle', duration: 'fast' } });

there is no tab animation, but switching between tabs is smooth.

I found a way to make it scroll back, but it's not a proper fix, as the browser still jumps to the top after clicking a tab. The scroll happens between the events tabsselect and tabsshow, so the following code jumps back to your tab:

var scroll_to_x = 0;
var scroll_to_y = 0;
$('.ui-tabs-nav').bind('tabsselect', function(event, ui) {
    scroll_to_x = window.pageXOffset;
    scroll_to_y = window.pageYOffset;
});
$('.ui-tabs-nav').bind('tabsshow', function(event, ui) {
    window.scroll(scroll_to_x, scroll_to_y);
});

I'll post any more progress I make.

I was given a solution for this...

How to stop screen from jumping up when tab is clicked:

Wrap the div that contains the tabs in a div with a fixed height.

See example here: http://5bosses.com/examples/tabs/sample_tabs.html

Mike's solution demonstrated the principle greatly but it has a big drawback - if the resultant page is short, the screen will jump to the top anyway! The only solution is to remember the scrollTop, and restore it after the tabs are switched. But before the restoration, enlarge the page (html tag) appropriatelly:

(edit - modified for new Jquery UI API + small improvement for large pages)

$(...).tabs({
    beforeActivate: function(event, ui) {
        $(this).data('scrollTop', $(window).scrollTop()); // save scrolltop
    },
    activate: function(event, ui) {
        if (!$(this).data('scrollTop')) { // there was no scrolltop before
            jQuery('html').css('height', 'auto'); // reset back to auto...
                    // this may not work on page where originally
                    // the html tag was of a fixed height...
            return;
        }
        //console.log('activate: scrolltop pred = ' + $(this).data('scrollTop') + ', nyni = ' + $(window).scrollTop());
        if ($(window).scrollTop() == $(this).data('scrollTop')) // the scrolltop was not moved
            return;                // nothing to be done
        // scrolltop moved - we need to fix it
        var min_height = $(this).data('scrollTop') + $(window).height();
            // minimum height the document must have to have that scrollTop
        if ($('html').outerHeight() < min_height) { // just a test to be sure
                            // but this test should be always true
            /* be sure to use $('html').height() instead of $(document).height()
               because the document height is always >= window height!
               Not what you want. And to handle potential html padding, be sure
               to use outerHeight instead!
                   Now enlarge the html tag (unfortunatelly cannot set
               $(document).height()) - we want to set min_height
               as html's outerHeight:
             */
            $('html').height(min_height -
                 ($('html').outerHeight() - $('html').height()));
        }
        $(window).scrollTop($(this).data('scrollTop')); // finally, set it back
    }
});

Works with the fx effect too.

Thanks for your help. Good suggestion, but I tried before with no luck. I think JQuery UI may be overriding my efforts.

Here is the code per tab:

<li class=""><a href="#fragment-2"><span>Two</span></a></li>

I already tried this with no success:

<li class=""><a href="#fragment-2" onclick="return false;"><span>Two</span></a></li>

Here is a simple example (without return false): http://5bosses.com/examples/tabs/sample_tabs.html

Any other suggestions?

> var scroll_to_x = 0; var scroll_to_y =
> 0;
> $('.ui-tabs-nav').bind('tabsselect',
> function(event, ui) {
>     scroll_to_x = window.pageXOffset;
>     scroll_to_y = window.pageYOffset; }); $('.ui-tabs-nav').bind('tabsshow',
> function(event, ui) {
>     window.scroll(scroll_to_x, scroll_to_y); });

Thanks for your help! Please let me know what else you find.

The above function works (screen doesn't move permanently)... but, the screen is very wobbly on click.

Here is a simple example showing how clicking a tabs causes the screen to jump toward the top (without the above code): http://5bosses.com/examples/tabs/sample_tabs.html

Note that there's no animation being used.

There is a much more simple way which I discovered from the comments on this page that is to simply remove the href="#" and it will not jump to the top any more! I verified and it works for me. Cheers

I prefer to have an href="#" in my links that do not take the user anywhere, but you can do this as long as you add an onclick="return false;". The key, I guess, is not sending the user to "#", which depending on the browser seems to default as the top of the current page.