Changing contents by clicking on links eg: href="#tab2"

I came across a site last week and but I forgot what's the site url.

It has a few tabs on top, each with links which looks like:

<a href="#tab1">Tab 1</a>
<a href="#tab2">Tab 2</a>
<a href="#tab3">Tab 3</a>

When I click at Tab 2, it shows tab 2 and hides tab 1 and tab 3.

So I think it has something related to the # thing. Maybe a function that monitor the changes of #??

I am 100% sure that the link do not have onclick="function" on them, just a simple <a href="#tab1">Tab 1</a>

Something like Gmail..
Gmail inbox is : url#inbox
Gmail spam is : url#spam

How can i do that? Thank you.

BTW, for your information, its not things like this

 

well - you can do all sorts... via a framework - say mootools or jquery, you'd do something like:

<a class="tab" href="#tab1">Tab 1</a>
<a class="tab" href="#tab2">Tab 2</a>
<a class="tab" href="#tab3">Tab 3</a>
...
<div class="tabs" id="tab1">content in tab 1</div>
<div class="tabs" id="tab2" style="display: none">content in tab 2</div>
<div class="tabs" id="tab3" style="display: none">content in tab 3</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
// for mootools 1.2.1
window.addEvent("domready", function() {
$$("a.tab").addEvents({
    "click": function(e) {
        e.preventDefault(); // stop click from changing url.
        var target = this.get("href").replace("#", ""); // gets the tab
        // close all tabs
        $$("div.tabs").setStyle("display", "none");
        // open the one that's clicked
        $(target).setStyle("display", "block");
    }
}); // end addEvents

}); // end domready
</script>

PHP:

Admitedly this is a semantic way of doing things but it is now also acceptable to do something like:

<a class="tab" href="#" data-id="tab1">Tab 1</a>
... then later on in the JS
var target = $(this.get("data-id"));

PHP:

the data-nnn is a namespace introduced by HTML 5 for element storage and should validate correctly.

also, all of the above can be easily done w/o a framework also.

 

Thanks for spending time on my post. Thanks!

+ rep for you