I have just released SleekTabs 0.2.1.

Nothing too exciting, unfortunately, just a bugfix release for a bug which would cause the ajax URLs of a tab not to work if they contained an extra ‘/’ character. This bug was a problem with a regular expression used to append a timestamp variable to the ajax URL (which itself is a fix for a bug with IE caching).

As always, you can download the script from the SleekTabs project page or from its home on PHP Classes.

SleekTabs still often has a bit of a learning curve to implement for many people. It is a bit, well, quirky, in the way that it has to be implemented. It could be better.

I have previously put together a video tutorial explaining with a good example how to implement it, but there has still been confusion, partly due to the old example/tutorial that ships with the download.

I’ve now put together a text version of the video tutorial (just Part 1 for now), which is easier to consume than the video if you’re pressed for time or just want to quickly look up a detail.

I’m also considering removing the old example file as part of the SleekTabs download, to avoid future confusion. The problem stems from the fact that implementation is approached two different ways across the old and new examples.

I am concerned, though, that because it is a much simpler example, removing it could be a problem for those who want to get up and running as quickly as possible, without digesting the more detailed tutorial.

I welcome all comments on SleekTabs and the documentation, so if you have ideas on how to make things better, or want to feedback things that you think are working well, please do let me know!

It’s been a while since I last did a video tutorial explaining how to use SleekTabs, so I thought I would dig up the project again and try to explain how to use it a little better.

The result has been my day’s work today. It’s a two part tutorial, showing you how to first set up a simple three-tabbed static web page with Ajax support, and then moving on into part two to show you how to configure fallback support (something that I never touched on previously).

Part 1

Part 2

More info about this tutorial, including the source files for this demo project, and a link to a live working completed version, is available on my documentation wiki.

I am aware that the audio quality is far from good – there is quite bad noise on the audio track and some obvious audio transitions that I really could have done better. However, I still think it’s a good resource for explaining SleekTabs and I’d love to hear any further feedback on either this or the program itself.

It has been far too long since I first released SleekTabs, my PHP class which makes it easy to create tabs on your web page.

Finally, after a lot of doing not a lot, and some sporadic bursts of development, I’d like to introduce SleekTabs 0.2. First of all, I want to thank Richard Fitzgerald, who initially contacted me with an idea for this release’s main feature – caching, and has advised me on various things during its development and continues to help me with the project.

Now, let’s take a look at the main features of this release:

• Caching – if you so wish, you can enable caching, so multiple requests for the same tab are fetched from the user’s local cache, rather than resulting in another request to your server.
• IE bug fix – this release works around a bug in Internet Explorer that causes it to undesirably cache the tab results, by introducing a timestamp into the SleekTabs request URI.
• Overhauled example script – the index.php example script included has been completely reworked, fully documented and commented to explain how to implement SleekTabs in your site and how it works.

I really have to apologise for how long this has taken – it’s been literally months since the initial release and this release isn’t exactly groundbreaking. However, it is a step forward in SleekTabs’ evolution and makes the installation and integration process much clearer.

You can download SleekTabs from the project page here and give it a try for yourself. It is also available from PHP Classes. All genuine feedback is appreciated – and if you do use it on your site, thanks!

SleekTabs is licensed under a BSD style licence – see the headers in the files in the download for more information.