How to use jQuery Tabs feature in less than 1 minute

Last Updated: June 3, 2021

Tabs are a great way of displaying lots of content in a small area. Only one tab is visible at a time and others are hidden. Clicking on a tab will display it and hide all the others.

In this tutorial you will learn to create jQuery Tabs feature in less than 1 minute time. You can also download the full source code and use it freely in your website.

Tabs HTML Structure

Our jQuery Tabs feature is divided into 2 parts – head & content. It resides in a div with id tabs.

<div id="tabs">
    <!--Head-->
    <!--Content-->  
</div>

The CSS for this tabs div:

#tabs {
    overflow: hidden;
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    background-color: #f1f1f1;
}

Head Part of the Tabs

I use ul and li tags to create the head part of the jQuery Tabs.

<div class="head">
    <ul>
        <li class="active">Delhi</li>
        <li>Beijing</li>
        <li>Jerusalem</li>
        <li>Moscow</li>
    </ul>
</div> 

Each li contains a name of the country. The first one has class called active – this is use to make it look selected when the page loads.

The CSS of head part is:

/*Head area*/
#tabs .head {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 100%;
    border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
}
  
    #tabs .head ul {
        list-style: none;
        padding: 0;
        margin: 0;
    }
  
    #tabs .head li {
        float: left;
        border: none;
        cursor: pointer;
        padding: 14px 16px;
        transition: 0.3s;
        font-size: 17px;
        color: #000;
    }
  
#tabs li:hover {
    background-color: #ddd;
}
  
/*Head area active tab*/
#tabs li.active {
    background-color: #ccc;
}

You can see that the active class when applied to the li tag will change it’s background to a greyish color one.

This color gives the appearance of selection to the li tag.

I have also created a tutorial on jQuery Treeview feature which you will love to read.

Content Part of the Tabs

The content is the part where the tabs content is shown. It has 4 divs that contains four different countries information.

<div class="content">
    <div class="active">
        <h3>Delhi</h3>
        <p>It is capital of India</p>
    </div>
    <div>
        <h3>Beijing</h3>
        <p>It is capital of China</p>
    </div>
    <div>
        <h3>Jerusalem</h3>
        <p>It is capital of Israel</p>
    </div>
    <div>
        <h3>Moscow</h3>
        <p>It is capital of Russia</p>
    </div>
</div>

Initially when the page loads, the 4 divs remains hidden (display: none), except the first div that has an active class applied to it.

The CSS of the Content part clearly explains this:

/*Content area*/
#tabs .content > div {
    display: none;
    padding: 6px 12px;
    color: #000;
}
  
    /*Content area active tab*/
    #tabs .content > div.active {
        display: block;
    }

jQuery code of the Tabs

Now let us create the jQuery code for the tabs feature. I apply a click event on the li tags of the head part.

On the click event I am adding the active class on the clickedli and removing the active class on from the other li tags.
Other thing which I am doing is adding the active class on the corresponding content div and removing the active class form other content divs.
I am storing the index of the clicked header li so that I can know which number of the li the user has clicked.
Next I am using the jQuery nth-child method to find the corresponding index of the content div to which I have to add the active class.
Once active class is added to the content div then it will be displayed.

The jQuery code for this whole thing is given below.

$("#tabs > .head > ul > li").click(function (e) {
    $(this).addClass("active");
    $(this).siblings().removeClass("active");
    index = $(this).index();
  
    $("#tabs > .content > div").removeClass("active");
    $("#tabs > .content > div:nth-child(" + (index + 1) + ")").addClass("active");
});

Do you know that with jQuery you can Scroll to a Specific Topic on the page when the page first loads? Check this tutorial for more.

The whole code of jQuery Tabs

HTML Code:

<div id="tabs">
    <div class="head">
        <ul>
            <li class="active">Delhi</li>
            <li>Beijing</li>
            <li>Jerusalem</li>
            <li>Moscow</li>
        </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="content">
        <div class="active">
            <h3>Delhi</h3>
            <p>It is capital of India</p>
        </div>
        <div>
            <h3>Beijing</h3>
            <p>It is capital of China</p>
        </div>
        <div>
            <h3>Jerusalem</h3>
            <p>It is capital of Israel</p>
        </div>
        <div>
            <h3>Moscow</h3>
            <p>It is capital of Russia</p>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

CSS Code:

/*Tabs*/
#tabs {
    overflow: hidden;
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    background-color: #f1f1f1;
}
  
    /*Head area*/
    #tabs .head {
        display: inline-block;
        width: 100%;
        border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
    }
  
        #tabs .head ul {
            list-style: none;
            padding: 0;
            margin: 0;
        }
  
        #tabs .head li {
            float: left;
            border: none;
            cursor: pointer;
            padding: 14px 16px;
            transition: 0.3s;
            font-size: 17px;
            color: #000;
        }
  
    #tabs li:hover {
        background-color: #ddd;
    }
  
    /*Head area active tab*/
    #tabs li.active {
        background-color: #ccc;
    }
  
    /*Content area*/
    #tabs .content > div {
        display: none;
        padding: 6px 12px;
        color: #000;
    }
  
        /*Content area active tab*/
        #tabs .content > div.active {
            display: block;
        }
/*End*/

jQuery Code:

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
    $(document).ready(function () {
        $("#tabs > .head > ul > li").click(function (e) {
            $(this).addClass("active");
            $(this).siblings().removeClass("active");
            index = $(this).index();
  
            $("#tabs > .content > div").removeClass("active");
            $("#tabs > .content > div:nth-child(" + (index + 1) + ")").addClass("active");
        });
    });
</script>