I'm referring to this original post ( http://www.therailsway.com/2007/6/4/free-for-all-tab-helper ), all the comments therein, and the followup summary article ( http://www.therailsway.com/2007/6/28/free-for-all-tab-helper-summary )

While the pure css solution is elegant, it doesnt work so well for me because I need my tabs to be dynamic and decoupled from the controller.

Thus, Koz's Take is where I headed, although his answer is pretty sparse.

This is what I ended up with.

The following helper goes into application_helper.rb:

 # helper

  def tab_for(tab, link, label=nil)
    content_tag :li, link_to(label||tab.to_s.titleize, link), :class => ("current_tab" if @current_tab == tab)
  end

The helper is called in your view templates to render the tabs, perhaps as a _tabs partial called from a layout, as follows

# _tabs partial

<div id="tabs">
  <ul>
    <%# tab_for TAB_SYM, LINK [, TEXT] %> 
    <%= tab_for :projects, projects_path %>
    <%= tab_for :user, user_path(current_user), "Contact" %>
  </ul>
</div>

The instance variable @current_tab is set by any action to make one of the tabs current. This could be done in a before_filter,

# users_controller

before_filter :set_current_tab, :only => :show

  def set_current_tab
    @current_tab = :user
  end

Finally, css is used to make the <ul> and <li> tags into tabs:

# css based on http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors2/

#tabs {
  margin-top: 10px;
  float:left;
  width:100%;
  background:#fff url("/images/tabs/tab2_bg.png") repeat-x bottom;
}
#tabs ul {
  margin:0;
  padding:10px 10px 0 10px;
  list-style:none;
}
#tabs li {
  float:left;
  background:url("/images/tabs/tab2_left.png") no-repeat left top;
  margin:0;
  padding:0 0 0 9px;
}
#tabs a {
  display:block;
  background:url("/images/tabs/tab2_right.png") no-repeat right top;
  padding:5px 35px 2px 6px; 
  text-decoration:none;
}
#tabs a:hover {
  text-decoration: underline;
}
#tabs li.current_tab {
  background-image:url("/images/tabs/tab2_left_on.png");
}
#tabs li.current_tab a {
  background-image: url("/images/tabs/tab2_right_on.png");
  padding-bottom:3px; 
  color:#fff;
}