Building Simple Tabs with Vanilla JavaScript

Tabs are one of those UI patterns you see everywhere — dashboards, settings pages, pricing sections,...

Tabs are one of those UI patterns you see everywhere — dashboards, settings pages, pricing sections, docs, etc.

In this post, we’ll build a fully working tab system using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

HTML Structure

The HTML Structure is minimalistic:

<div class="tabbed-content">
  <ul class="tabs" role="tablist">
    <li role="tab" aria-selected="true" class="active">Tab 1</li>
    <li role="tab" aria-selected="false">Tab 2</li>
    <li role="tab" aria-selected="false">Tab 3</li>
  </ul>

  <div class="content">
    <div class="show">
      <h2>Tab 1 content</h2>
      <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.</p>
    </div>

    <div>
      <h2>Tab 2 content</h2>
      <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.</p>
    </div>

    <div>
      <h2>Tab 3 content</h2>
      <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.</p>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

As you can see, on page load, the first tab has the class name active, and the first panel has the class name show. The aria-selected attribute helps with accessibility.

The CSS Styling

.tabbed-content {
  margin: 10px auto;
  max-width: 500px;
}

.tabs {
  display: flex;
}

.tabs li {
  flex: 1;
  border: 1px solid #ddd;
  border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0;
  background: #eee;
  cursor: pointer;
  height: 36px;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
}

.tabs li.active {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;
  background: #fff;
}

.content {
  padding: 10px;
  border: 1px solid #ddd;
  border-top: none;
}

.content > div {
  display: none;
}

.content > div.show {
  display: block;
}

.content h2 {
  font-size: 18px;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
}

.content p {
  font-size: 14px;
}

The JavaScript Logic

const tabbedContent = document.querySelector('.tabbed-content');
const tabs = tabbedContent.querySelectorAll('.tabs li');
const contentItems = tabbedContent.querySelectorAll('.content > div');

tabs.forEach((tab, index) => {
  tab.addEventListener('click', () => {
    // Reset all tabs
    tabs.forEach((t) => {
      t.classList.remove('active');
      t.setAttribute('aria-selected', 'false');
    });

    // Hide all content
    contentItems.forEach((item) => {
      item.classList.remove('show');
    });

    // Activate clicked tab
    tab.classList.add('active');
    tab.setAttribute('aria-selected', 'true');

    // Show matching content
    contentItems[index].classList.add('show');
  });
});

How It Works

We match Tab 1 to Content 1, Tab 2 to Content 2, and Tab 3 to Content 3 by using index: tabs.forEach((tab, index) => {}). So when a tab is clicked, we show the corresponding panel with contentItems[index].classList.add('show').

Before activating a new tab, we always reset everything using:

tabs.forEach(t => {
  t.classList.remove('active');
});

contentItems.forEach(item => {
  item.classList.remove('show');
});

This ensures only one tab is active and only one panel is displayed at a time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, each tab controls one content panel, and everything else is just state management.

No frameworks needed. You can take these tabs and style them as you need.