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Recent Blog Posts
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It's actually quite difficult to believe that my MacBook is 18 months old now. About a month ago, I noticed that mounting DVDs became...Posted on 04/07/2008 at 19:01 by Peter.
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I've just pushed out a new version of WPGet, to fix an issue with its category support that has been there for quite some time.
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0 comments.WordPress integration powered by WPGet by Peter Upfold.
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Pocket Money
Projects - SleekTabs
What is it?
SleekTabs is a bit of software written in PHP that allows you to make tabbed web pages really easily. With just a small snippet of code, you can have tabs anywhere on your page. When a user clicks a tab, some new information gets loaded into the page, without them having to endure a full reload.
The result is a cool, sleek way to improve your users' experience by making it faster and better. It also uses less bandwidth, as the whole page doesn't need to be retransferred each time a tab is clicked.
What about people without JavaScript on? Will my site break?
No. SleekTabs is clever enough that if you set it up correctly, a fallback URL can be specified. When the user clicks a tab with JavaScript off (or if a search engine wants to view a tab, for example), it still works. Sure, it's not as flashy, but it still works.
How do I set it up?
As well as the method below, I've put together a video tutorial which should assist you with a basic set up.
Included in the download is an example file - index.php. This example file is fully documented and commented, and having a quick peek through it will show you how to successfully implement it in your page. At the moment it does require some basic knowledge with PHP, but hopefully future versions will lower the bar.
What about browser support?
We aim to support all mainstream modern browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and other browsers based on the Gecko and WebKit engines.
Who made this?
SleekTabs is made by myself and Richard Fitzgerald, but hosted here on my site. SleekTabs originally came into life as it was adapted from an internal class used to make tabbed interfaces on a project I was working on. It has now evolved and grown into its own script.
What are the licence terms?
SleekTabs is free software/open source under the BSD Licence. See the licence header in the sleektabs.php file for more information.
Download
Get downloading below.
Download .tar.bz2
Download .tar.gz
Download .zip
Documentation
Other than watching the video tutorial, the best way to read up on how SleekTabs works and how to integrate it into your site is to look at the index.php example file included in the download. The example file is fully commented and explains each step of the process.
You may also browse the documentation wiki.
SleekTabs on PHP Classes
SleekTabs is listed on the PHP Classes site.
Please see http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/3824.html for more information.
SleekTabs 0.1 won the April 2007 PHP Classes Innovation Award!
Demonstrations
In case you haven't already seen this, I have put together a two-part video tutorial on SleekTabs.
You are also welcome to view this video demonstration of SleekTabs, but please be aware it was created for the old version of SleekTabs, version 0.1. Many things have now changed.
Changelog
- 0.2 - caching, timestamps to fix an Internet Explorer bug, new example script and many minor enhancements.
- 0.1 - initial release with Ajax tab switching and fallback support.
