I'm not sure this is what you are referring to, but my guess is that when you refresh the page while you're on the "Elements" tab, for instance, you want it to re-load with the "Elements" tab selected.
The typical way to do this is through the use of Hash Tags, and a bit of JavaScript logic. Specifically: each of your tabs is actually an <a />
tag, and currently - they each have a url of href='#'
- which means that they are hash-tag links. However - they all link to the base hash.
Usually, what you will see is that each tab will have a different hash-reference, which refers to a different view mode the page is supposed to be in. So - if the URL contains #dashboard
, the javascript on the page knows that as soon as the page loads, it is supposed to show the dashboard. If, on the other hand, the URL contains #elements
, then it is the "Elements" tab that should be showing.
There are some solid plugins out there that handle this sort of thing - but without a major rewrite to your UI (which is already pretty snazzy lookin') - I'd suggest just doing a little bit of jQuery to figure out what the hash is, and checking it on load.
Look at the Stack Overflow question Retrieve specific hash tag's value from url as an example of some ways to work with hashtags.