Using jQuery UI Tabs. How would I make one of the tabs link to a URL rather than load a tab panel?

Question

I am using jQuery UI tabs to create a vertical tab section of a page, and want the last vertical tab to link out to a URL rather than load a tab panel.

Any suggestions for the best way to do this? I can stick another element besides an LI into the list, but would rather have the last li just behave differently.

Thanks for any help.

Here's my javascript:

  // vtabs
  $("#aboutprod-tabs").tabs(
    { fx: [{opacity:'toggle', duration:'normal'},
    {opacity:'toggle', duration:'fast'}] })
    .addClass('ui-tabs-vertical'); 

And HTML

<div id="aboutprod-tabs">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#tabs-1">First</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabs-2">Second</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabs-3">3rd</a></li>
    <li class="last"><a href="/products">Learn more...</a></li>
  </ul>
  <div id="tabs-1">
    Tab panel 1
  </div>
  <div id="tabs-2">
    Tab panel 2  
  </div>
  <div id="tabs-3">
    Tab panel 3
  </div>
</div>

Solution

After your .tabs() call you can reverse the click behavior and href it changed, putting the href back like this:

$("li.last a").unbind('click').click(function() {
  this.href = $.data(this, 'href.tabs');​​​​
});

You can give it a try here.

Update: Using newer versions of jQuery:

There is no need to add a click handler once you unbind jQuery-UI's click handler from the link you want to change. This will work:

$("li.last a").unbind('click');

Comments

[Spectre87]

To make this work with jQuery 1.8.2/jQuery UI 1.9.0, just use $("li.last a").unbind('click'). The example in the answer worked great for earlier versions of jQuery, but for some reason the added click handler was messing things up in the latest version.

[The Maniac]

Alex is absolutely correct, this answer should be edited to include this information.

[Codeguy007]

I know this question is older but I thought this was an important note. If you are looking to go to an external link instead of just load one you need a click handler and it's working fine for me with jquery-ui-1.10.3. Instead of this.href, you replace it with Location.href. In my case I wanted to make a tab a logout button.

[James Moberg]

I couldn't get this code to work... I had to use: $("li:last a").unbind('click'); To only affect the tab, I used: $('#tabID > ul > li:last a').unbind('click');

[Arin Chakraborty]

You saved a whole lot of Trouble. Thanks a lot.

[Jamie M]

Thanks- this helped out a lot. @JamesMoberg - I just gave the tab in question an id, such as <a id="mapLink" href="...">Site Map</a>. then all i needed was $("#mapLink").unbind('click');

[David Harkness]

Using jQuery UI 1.8.16, I had to change the added click event to instead use each to reassign the href from the data attribute, but then it worked.

[jave.web]

where is this documented? api.jqueryui.com/tabs currently does not say anything about this for tabs...

[partkyle]

This is something that may have been valid in 2010 when I wrote this, but I haven't kept up with jQuery, so I'm not sure. Good Luck.

[jave.web]

thanks for the info, in the end I ended up making my own "tabs" little-script, because I also didn't want the styling, so I solved 2 problems in one short soulution - stackoverflow.com/a/39621077/1835470