Template talk:Start tab

The template is very well done
Unfortunately its documentation isn't. It shows the most common error in template documentation: it doesn't use plain English to describe its functions and how to use them. Additionally, it has features that weren't added into the document. I added in the missing fields that I could find, but I have no idea what some of them do or what is the required format needed to insure they work properly! --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 19:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Many thanks. Yeah, this is my fault: I've been adding to the template as new features are required, but haven't been keeping the docs up to date. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Possible to highlight a "current" tab that is not actually "current"?
Hi, is it possible to highlight an arbitrary tab? In this case, I'd like to highlight the "Do" tab (using commoer tabs, which is based on start tab) when on this page. Suggestions? -Pete (talk) 18:15, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I added something to commoer tabs, which kind of does it. I could probably remove the lower border as well, but you get the idea. Frietjes (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * okay, it looks like [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACommoer_tabs&diff=516029837&oldid=514672149 this does what you want]. if you want this feature on more than one page, I would suggest adding parameter to pass to  to allow one to choose a tab to be selected, when there is no match. Frietjes (talk) 20:41, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Aha -- very clever, thanks!
 * I would probably like to explore adding a parameter as you describe, but I'm a little unsure how to go about it. I can probably figure it out if I put some work into it, but may be back wit questions. Many thanks for this! -Pete (talk) 23:06, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * A little coffee worked wonders -- I added a new parameter, "activetab", and updated your bit of code. Thanks again! -Pete (talk) 17:29, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * yes, that is what I was thinking. I'm glad it works. Frietjes (talk) 17:32, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

On tab color
The 'on tab color' attribute for WikiProject Neopaganism/Tabs doesn't seem to be taking affect. Any ideas why? — Sowlos (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know for sure, but I did a test, which reveals that one of the color attributes is affecting the space below the tabs. You might take a look at how we've implemented it in Template:Commoer tabs -- we've used the parameters somewhat differently, and it seems to be working. (Though I do like the way you've made "talk" superscripted on each tabs, that's kinda neat -- and I don't think you could do that with our approach.) Anyway, I guess this isn't super helpful -- but it's the best I can do. Good luck! -Pete (talk) 05:58, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I fixed it. if you use the "free form" feature, you also need to set the "link" values. Frietjes (talk) 16:40, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I completely glazed over that difference when comparing it to other Start tab implementations. For some reason I remember documentation saying it was optional in that case. Well, I can't find that so - hopefully - no one else should make that mistake. — Sowlos (talk) 18:52, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Glad I could help -- I'm really just feeling my way through this too, so, I'm glad to be able to do something to help! -Pete (talk) 06:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

End tab required?
So End tab is used in examples, but is it required? What does it add? -DePiep (talk) 23:42, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * it doesn't appear to be required, if you use frame, then it may be useful for closing the generated &lt;div&gt; tags. if you use URL-1, then it does generate some stuff at the bottom of the page. Frietjes (talk) 00:04, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Spacing issue?
Hello page watchers! I am trying to make a template of this for my Wikiproject. However, when I put the {| and |} wrappers around this template, it creates some white space between the tabs. Anyone know why? WikiProject Quebec/Nav bar - Sweet Nightmares  01:14, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I am an idiot, I figured it out! - Sweet Nightmares  01:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 03 December 2014

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the template at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 17:20, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Template:Start tab → Template:Start tabs – Typo (missing "s") – Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Steel1943  (talk) 19:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not uncontroversial as the page is move-protected. For this reason, this needs full discussion. Steel1943  (talk) 19:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I see no reason to move this well established template for something so little where the requested new location is already a redirect to here. There is no net gain to this, and as such, opposed. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why not give the template to which another/others redirect the more accurate name, though? Sardanaphalus (talk) 14:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Considering we "collapse" tables, and when I use this template I want to create a hidden section, think the name is the more accurate one. If you want an archive, use, if you just want a hidden section in a discussion with some technical data or source code, use . Seems most logical to me. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Freeform attribute
Can anyone give me an example of how to use the freeform attribute? I'm struggling to get it to work.

I've written:


 * freeform-6         = yes
 * tab-6              = Gender gap mailing list
 * link-6             = https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

but the link is not showing up. SarahSV (talk) 23:15, 2 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Pinging some people who've commented above in case any of you can help:, , ,.


 * I managed to get freeform-n to work by adding true instead of yes, but it's adding single square brackets around the link. It's for Template:WikiProject CSB/Gender gap task force/Tab header. SarahSV (talk) 02:05, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * SarahSV, did you try


 * freeform-6         = yes
 * tab-6              = Gender gap mailing list
 * link-6             =
 * Frietjes (talk) 14:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * , thank you, that has worked. SarahSV (talk) 18:33, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Glad you got that sorted out, cause I had no idea. On a tangent, though...Visual Editor on Meta just taught me a nice trick I wasn't aware of: gendergap is a nice shortcut for the URL above. Or...well, maybe not the exact URL, it goes to the archive page, not the listinfo page. But a nice little trick I hadn't been aware of, regardless. -Pete (talk) 04:53, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, I've been searching for a way to do that. I may pop it into one of the tabs as a link to the archives. SarahSV (talk) 05:43, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Margin on Mobile
There's a problem with margin on the mobile view. See Wikiversity:Template:Start tab for the correction. -- Dave Braunschweig (talk) 19:55, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * done, thank you. Frietjes (talk) 16:40, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

End tab?
First, the documentation for is identical to that for. The lead of Template:End tab should be about that template, surely?

Second, does have to include all the arguments contained in  ? If so, why? Surely the template itself is enough to close the session?

Thanks — Iadmc  ♫ talk 15:27, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * User:Iadmc, yes, see the examples, they use the same arguments, hence the same documentation. Frietjes (talk) 15:23, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Makes sense now! — Iadmc  ♫ talk  23:07, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Please de-confuse me. So is a stand-alone template? Or is it a closer like we have with: -- enveloped stuff --?

(only adding  or so but the idea is there). Asked in an other way: when using, am I supposed to close anything in my code (a &lt;/div> maybe)? -DePiep (talk) 20:43, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * DePiep, if you don't use frame, I believe you can use start tab at the top of the page without using end tab at the bottom of the page. if you use frame, then start tab will generate a couple page framing div tags, so you will want to close those at the bottom, and end tab close the div tags for you.  in fact, end tab adds closing div tags even when there are no open div tags.  but through the magic of smart web browsers and HTML tidy, these are probably cleaned up in a reasonable way. but, can cause strange output if there are divs enclosing the tabs. Frietjes (talk) 00:44, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I still can't get it working
Once again, I am struggling to make this template work. I am missing the basic documentation, like:
 * per tab-n do enter:
 * tab-n =
 * link-n =
 * freestyle-n = yes/no

Why is there no simple description: param A: Here you shold enter a pagename param B: Here you can enter free text

I still don't get where to enter a link (pagename) and where to enter free text. All interrelated parameters shoud disappear. This is template, not python encoding.

btw, doc is contradicting:
 * "Each tab needs a link attribute"
 * "When using the freeform attribute, the link attribute remains empty" -DePiep (talk) 21:27, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

VisualEditor functionality
has noticed that this template doesn't work well with VisualEditor (see this conversation). Would there be an easy fix for that? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 21:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, to clarify, the issue is that when you try to use VE on the page it treats the whole page as a template and when you try and edit it with VE it just pops up as a box with wikicode in. John Cummings (talk) 21:48, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I ran into this as well. The issue is that this template just opens a div/table and doesn't close it, so the border goes around all the content, but it means VE/Parsoid can't handle it. I think the "easy fix" is to just have the tabs at the top, but not use it around the entire page Legoktm (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 29 May 2020
Please apply Special:Diff/827251205/959530996 to use yesno to check the boolean parameter frame. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:17, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ * Pppery * it has begun... 16:48, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Can't get th template to work
I tried implimenting this template on my user page but when you go to my talk page it breaks. The selected tab does not change colour but text is still bolded as normal. It works on some of my pages. βӪᑸᙥӴ • Talk • Contribs 19:20, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , in your subpage User:Bop34/header, the parameter link-2 incorrectly links to User Talk:Bop34 instead of User talk:Bop34 – note the capitalization of "talk". —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , Wow thanks! It works now. βӪᑸᙥӴ • Talk • Contribs 01:29, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Color of Tab Labels
Hi!

Thanks for this template. I'm currently working on a grant for a new math education project on Wikiversity. We're trying to use this template, with some success and one major difficulty so far.

For the tab background colors in our project portal, we've used the two main logo colors. This works well because it makes the active and inactive tabs very easily distinguishable. Unfortunately, it appears there are no template parameters for customizing the tab label color.

In general, is there a recommended way that I could customize the CSS for our portal? Alternatively, would it be possible to create template parameters for the label color of active and inactive tabs, just as there are parameters for the background color of active and inactive tabs?

Thank you so much for any help!

--Greg at Higher Math Help (talk) 05:40, 21 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Updates:
 * I made adaptations of Start tab and Tab that support new parameters,  , and  , which can be used in the same way as  ,  , and.
 * I also included new HTML class attributes  and   that make it possible to apply custom CSS styling to the tab labels via the TemplateStyles extension. This makes it possible to target specific link states via CSS pseudo-classes like   (for example, to style or remove the underline that appears when a users hovers over a label).
 * The adapted templates are Eventmath start tab, Eventmath Tab, and Eventmath end tab, although changes made to End tab shouldn't be needed (I just stripped out the "Next page:" functionality to reduce complexity).
 * An example of the new features is live on Eventmath, a Wikiversity learning project. (I haven't tested the new features outside of this use case.)
 * I'm sharing here in case anyone with permission (maybe Pppery, Frietjes, or Legoktm) has an interest in incorporating these changes into the main templates.
 * --Greg at Higher Math Help (talk) 06:29, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Disabling frame functionality on talk pages
Per discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Tab header, I intend to disable the "frame" functionality as it creates unbalanced wikitext and prevents the reply tool from working. The proposed change is currently in the sandbox, and it seems to work as expected in my testing. If people end up being mostly OK with this, I would eventually want to just disable the frame feature entirely, as it breaks normal VisualEditor too. Legoktm (talk) 06:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * just as a note, it also causes some issues with mobile view. Best Wishes,  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:32, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I support this change. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

✅, I updated the documentation to reflect this change and discourage its usage on regular pages too. Legoktm (talk) 03:41, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * For reference, this did break Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/header, which has been worked around for now. I started working on some code in the sandbox to fix this properly, by allowing frame usage when we can emit balanced wikitext, but the template code is getting messy that switching it to Lua first might be easier. Legoktm (talk) 09:05, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Opt in?
Is this actually a problem if the frame doesn't encompass the whole page? At WT:AFC or WP:NPP, for example. In which case, can we please re-enable frames on talk pages for that use case, ? Disabling the whole thing because some people use it poorly seems a bit heavy-handed. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 10:16, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Standardize tab design
Just a thought, but wouldn't it be nice if the tab design was the same and standardized across the wiki? Having WikiProjects and various documentation pages all trying to implement their own designs makes the wiki seem really messy. Lectrician1 (talk) 03:47, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 9 October 2022
The dummy tabs at the beginning and end of the tab section add unusual margins to the beginning and end of a tab grouping, as seen in WikiProject Russian invasion of Ukraine. An extra param, called, should be added to allow the user to disable the dummy tabs, like so: elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. I do not see anything unusual at that page. I think the tabs are supposed to look a little skeumorphic, like file folders, which do not have tabs that go all the way to the edge. If you would like to make your change in the sandbox and demonstrate it on the testcases page for consideration, please do so.  – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:43, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The change I want to make is implemented at Template:Start tab/sandbox. The  parameter would be optional and disabled by default. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 17:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That's step 1. Thank you. Now go to Template:Start tab/testcases and see whether it keeps existing test cases the same (it does not), and create a new test case to show the new feature working. I think you are missing a pipe in your check for the new parameter. Look for other if statements in templates to see how it works. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:54, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Looks like I was missing a pipe, thank you. Implementation works properly now. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 18:20, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep going. See the testcases page. I think you have an unclosed div tag. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Other dummy tab is fixed. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * See this test case. Why is the live template inside the sandbox template? (Answer: RTFM.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:28, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅. Please modify the documentation to explain this new feature. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:35, 14 October 2022 (UTC)