Tab key navigation in ASP.NET CORE Tab Component

10 Jan 20238 minutes to read

The TabIndex property of a Tab item is used to enable tab key navigation for that particular item. When a positive value is assigned to the TabIndex property, it allows the user to switch focus to the next or previous tab item using the Tab or Shift+Tab keys. By default, the user can only switch between tab items using the arrow keys.

If the TabIndex value is set to 0 for all tab items, the tab will switch based on the order of the elements on the page. This means that if the tab items are listed in a specific order on the page, the user will be able to navigate through them using the Tab key in that same order.

To use the TabIndex property, you can assign a positive value to the property of each tab item that you want to enable tab key navigation. For example:

CSHTML
Tabkeynavigation.cs
@using Syncfusion.EJ2.Navigations;

@{
    var content0 = "HyperText Markup Language, commonly referred to as HTML, is the standard markup language used to create web " +
            "pages. Along with CSS, and JavaScript, HTML is a cornerstone technology, used by most websites to create visually " +
            "engaging web pages, user interfaces for web applications, and user interfaces for many mobile applications.[1] Web " +
            "browsers can read HTML files and render them into visible or audible web pages. HTML describes the structure of a " +
            "website semantically along with cues for presentation, making it a markup language, rather than a programming language.";

    var content1 = "C# is intended to be a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language. Its development " +
            "team is led by Anders Hejlsberg. The most recent version is C# 5.0, which was released on August 15, 2012.";

    var content2 = "Java is a set of computer software and specifications developed by Sun Microsystems, later acquired by Oracle " +
            "Corporation, that provides a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing " +
            "environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones to " +
            "enterprise servers and supercomputers. While less common, Java applets run in secure, sandboxed environments to " +
            "provide many features of native applications and can be embedded in HTML pages.";

    var content3 = "The command-line compiler, VBC.EXE, is installed as part of the freeware .NET Framework SDK. Mono also " +
            "includes a command-line VB.NET compiler. The most recent version is VB 2012, which was released on August 15, 2012.";

    var content4 = "Xamarin is a San Francisco, California based software company created in May 2011[3] by the engineers that " +
            "created Mono,[4] Mono for Android and MonoTouch that are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language " +
            "Infrastructure (CLI) and Common Language Specifications (often called Microsoft .NET). With a C#-shared codebase, " +
            "developers can use Xamarin tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share " +
            "code across multiple platforms.[5] Xamarin has over 1 million developers in more than 120 countries around the World " +
            "as of May 2015.";

    var content5 = "ASP.NET is an open-source server-side web application framework designed for web development to produce " +
            "dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications " +
            "and web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor " +
            "to Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime (CLR), allowing " +
            "programmers to write ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language. The ASP.NET SOAP extension framework allows " +
            "ASP.NET components to process SOAP messages.";

    var content6 = "The ASP.NET MVC is a web application framework developed by Microsoft, which implements the " +
            "model–view–controller (MVC) pattern. It is open-source software, apart from the ASP.NET Web Forms component which is " +
            "proprietary. In the later versions of ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, and ASP.NET Web Pages (a platform using " +
            "only Razor pages) will merge into a unified MVC 6.The project is called ASP.NET vNext.";

    var content7 = "JavaScript (JS) is an interpreted computer programming language. It was originally implemented as part of " +
            "web browsers so that client-side scripts could interact with the user, control the browser, communicate " +
            "asynchronously, and alter the document content that was displayed.[5] More recently, however, it has become common in " +
            "both game development and the creation of desktop applications.";
}

<ejs-tab id="ej2Tab" width="500px" heightAdjustMode="Auto" overflowMode="Scrollable">
    <e-tab-tabitems>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText0" content="@content0" tabIndex= 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText1" content="@content1" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText2" content="@content2" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText3" content="@content3" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText4" content="@content4" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText5" content="@content5" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText6" content="@content6" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
        <e-tab-tabitem header="ViewBag.headerText7" content="@content7" tabIndex = 0></e-tab-tabitem>
    </e-tab-tabitems>
</ejs-tab>

<style>
    #container {
        visibility: hidden;
        max-width: 650px;
    }

    #loader {
        color: #008cff;
        height: 40px;
        left: 45%;
        position: absolute;
        top: 45%;
        width: 30%;
    }

    .e-content .e-item {
        font-size: 12px;
        margin: 10px;
        text-align: justify;
    }
</style>
public ActionResult Index()
{
    ViewBag.headerText0 = new TabHeader { Text = "HTML" };
    ViewBag.headerText1 = new TabHeader { Text = "C Sharp(C#)" };
    ViewBag.headerText2 = new TabHeader { Text = "Java" };
    ViewBag.headerText3 = new TabHeader { Text = "VB.Net" };
    ViewBag.headerText4 = new TabHeader { Text = "Xamarin" };
    ViewBag.headerText5 = new TabHeader { Text = "ASP.NET" };
    ViewBag.headerText6 = new TabHeader { Text = "ASP.NET MVC" };
    ViewBag.headerText7 = new TabHeader { Text = "JavaScript" };
    return View();
}

With this code, the user will be able to switch between the tab items using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, in the order specified by the TabIndex values.
It’s important to note that the TabIndex property only affects the ability to navigate between tab items using the Tab key. The user will still be able to use the arrow keys to switch between tab items, regardless of the value of the TabIndex property.

Enabling tab key navigation in Tabs