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?

Please see this example:

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

Answer 1

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.