I have noticed quite a few people asking how to set a default tab during page load using the jQuery UI Tabs Widget. My method is as follows…

<script>
$(function(){
 $('#tabs').tabs({
  selected: (location.hash && parseInt(location.hash.substr(1)) != 'NaN') ? parseInt(location.hash.substr(1)) : 0
 });
});
</script>

I am checking the url for a hash value (eg: mypage.htm#3). If one is found and it can be parsed to an integer, it will use that number for the selected tab, otherwise it defaults to zero.

jQuery UI Tabs Widget documentation

…

If you are not familiar with the short-hand if/else syntax above, here is an example…

variable = (condition) ? true : false;

Written long-hand it would be…

if (condition) {
 variable = true;
} else {
 variable = false;
}