JQuery UI Tabs Causing Screen to "Jump"

Question

I'm using the latest version of the JQuery UI tabs. I have tabs positioned toward the bottom of the page.

Every time I click a tab, the screen jumps toward the top.

How can I prevent this from happening?

See this example:

http://5bosses.com/examples/tabs/sample_tabs.html

Answer 1

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>

Answer 2

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?

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

> 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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

I had the same problem, plus mine were rotating on their own so if you were at the bottom of the page, the browser window would be scrolled up tot he top. Having a fixed height for the tab container worked for me. Kind of a weird thing still is that if you leave the window or tab and go back, it will still scroll. Not the end of the world, though.

Answer 9

If you're animating your tab transitions (ie. .tabs({ fx: { opacity: 'toggle' } });), then here's what's happening:

In most cases, the jumping isn't caused by the browser following the '#' link. The page jumps because at the midpoint of the animation between the two tab panes, both tab panes are fully transparent and hidden (as in display: none), so the effective height of the whole tabbed section becomes momentarily zero.

And if a zero-height tabbed section causes the page to be shorter, then the page will appear to jump up to compensate, when in reality it's simply resizing to fit the (momentarily) shorter content. Makes sense?

The best way to fix this is to set a fixed height for the tabbed section. If this is undesirable (because your tab content varies in height), then use this instead:

jQuery('#tabs').tabs({
 fx: { opacity: 'toggle' },
 select: function(event, ui) {
  jQuery(this).css('height', jQuery(this).height());
  jQuery(this).css('overflow', 'hidden');
 },
 show: function(event, ui) {
  jQuery(this).css('height', 'auto');
  jQuery(this).css('overflow', 'visible');
 }
});

It will set the computed height of the pane before the tab transition. Once the new tab has appeared, the height is set back to 'auto'. Overflow is set to 'hidden' to prevent content from breaking out of the pane when going from a short tab to a taller one.

This is what worked for me. Hope this helps.

Answer 10

replace the href="#" with href="javascript:void(0);" in 'a' element

works 100%

Answer 11

I have the same problem, but my tabs with ajax and the href is automatically changed to "# title". SO the jumping still active.

Answer 12

Did you tryed:

fx: {opacity:'toggle', duration:100}