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Tabs

Tabs consist of two or more tab items created for navigating between different sections of content.

Guidelines

Using tabs

Each tab will display different sections within the same context. For example, tabs can display different sections of an article, different topics or different edit views.

Example of Codex Tabs with five Tab items.

Specifications

The Tabs component always contains two or more Tab items.

Specification of Tab items.

Tabs include the following elements:

  1. Selected tab
    Within the tabs component, only one tab item can be selected at a time.
  2. Unselected tabs
    The remaining tab items will remain unselected. Users can choose these tabs by clicking on them or navigating to them via the keyboard’s arrow keys.
  3. Arrow button
    When tabs become scrollable, one or two icon-only buttons will appear. The number of buttons to scroll tabs will vary based on the tabs' scroll position. Users can utilize these buttons to navigate through the scrollable tabs.

Scrollable tabs

When there is not enough space to display all tabs, scrolling will be activated. When the scroll is enabled, the positions of the tabs will be indicated by arrow buttons:

  1. Initial position: Due to the tabs being in the first position, only the end arrow button will be visible at the end to scroll the tabs.
  2. Middle position: Both the start and end arrow buttons will be visible.
  3. End position: As scrolling reaches the end, only the start arrow will be visible in order to scroll the tabs from the end to the beginning.

Scrollable Tabs with arrows indicating scroll-ability.

Types

Depending on the tabs' style and where they are employed, there are two types of tabs:

Quiet tabs

These tabs feature a transparent background with a Gray400 underline to delineate the tabs base. The selected tab is highlighted in blue with a blue line underneath. These tabs are intended for use on open white backgrounds, and it is not recommended to use them within boxes or modules.

Example of quiet Tabs.

Framed tabs

These tabs have a Gray200 background, with the selected tab appearing in white. They are designed to be used within boxes or modules, where the gray background serves as a head for the box. It is not recommended to use framed tabs outside of a box context; in such cases, use the quiet tabs instead.

Example of framed Tabs.

Interaction states

The Tabs component itself does not have distinct states. Instead, individual states will be attributed to each Tab item.

Tabs with the first tab item selected and the third one in a hover state.

Demos

Basic Example

Two stylistic variants are available, quiet (the default) and framed.

Sand cat

The sand cat (Felis margarita), also known as the sand dune cat, is a small wild cat that inhabits sandy and stony deserts far from water sources. With its sandy to light grey fur, it is well camouflaged in a desert environment.

NameValue
Props
framed
View
Reading direction

Header row scroll

When the width of the header row exceeds the width of its container, arrow buttons will appear to enable scrolling through tab names.

Content for tab1

This is the content for the First Tab

NameValue
Props
framed
View
Reading direction

Dynamic replacement of slot content

The Tabs component will re-render if the provided slot content changes. Clicking the button below will replace the initial tabs with a new set; the header row will update to match.

Content for tab1

This is the content for the First Tab

Vue usage

One or more Tab components must be provided in the default slot of the Tabs component. Each child Tab component must have a name property. The Tabs component must have an active prop that matches the name of one of the child Tab components in the slot.

In order for the active tabs to change, the name of the active tab must be bound in the parent somehow, either using v-model:active or by manually binding the active prop and listening for update:active events.

Props

Prop nameDescriptionTypeDefault
active(required)The name of the currently active Tab in the layout.

Provided by v-model:active binding in the parent component.
string
framedWhether or not the component should be displayed in a framed visual style.booleanfalse

Methods

Method nameDescriptionSignature
selectProgrammatically select a tab based on its "name" propParams:
  • tabName string - The name of the tab to select
  • setFocus boolean - Whether or not to also set focus to the new tab
Returns: void
nextSet the next tab to active, if one existsParams:
  • setFocus boolean -
Returns: void
prevSet the previous tab to active, if one existsParams:
  • setFocus boolean -
Returns: void

Events

Event namePropertiesDescription
update:activeactive string - The name of the current active tabEmitted whenever the active tab changes

Slots

NameDescriptionBindings
defaultOne or more Tab components must be provided here

CSS-only version

Markup structure

The non-JS version of the Tabs component should be seen as a navigational tool. It relies on HTML form submission to trigger a change in the current active tab. When the user clicks on a tab button (or hits "Enter" while focused over one), the browser will load a new page.

Basic setup:

  • The outermost element should be a <div> element with the class "cdx-tabs".
  • The cdx-tabs__header element should be a <form> with the following attributes:
    • method="get": we will send the form with a GET request
    • action="myURL": The value of action should be whatever URL the form data will be sent to; in this example it's simply the same URL as the page, but appended with a different URL query parameter based on the user's tab selection. In a real-world use-case, this might be a URL that can accept query parameters (say for performing a different kind of search based on which tab the user selects).
  • Within the tablist element, every tab label is represented by a <button> element (this is the same as in the Vue version). However, since we are submitting the data as a form, each tab button must contain a name and a value attribute. In a real application, this might correspond to key-value pairs used for a given query parameter.
  • The tab corresponding to the current view should contain the aria-selected="true" attribute. All other tabs should have aria-selected="false". If you are using a server-side templating language like Mustache, this should be set there.
  • Each tab should also have an aria-controls attribute with a value of the ID of the corresponding tabpanel.
  • Don't mess with <button> tabindex – since the CSS-only version of this component has no way to bind left and right arrow keys to handler methods, the user is going to need to rely on the mouse or the tab key to navigate between tabs.
  • To disable a tab, simply add a disabled attribute to that tab's <button> in the tablist.

The tabs below have long labels, making the tab list too long for its container. When this happens, you can horizontally scroll to reach the rest of the tabs list.

WARNING

Keyboard navigation between tabs can only be done via the Tab key. Arrow keys will not work here.