Question

Is there a way to make a navbar (which appears to be designed to link to other pages) behave like a set of nav tabs (which stay on the same page, hiding all but the desired section)?

Actually, my navbar works just as I want, but only if I don’t call $(".nav-tabs").button(), which I need for other things. Now none of the collapsing/uncollapsing happens.

Here’s the code (which is pretty boiler-plate):

<div class="navbar navbar-fixed-top">
 <div class="navbar-inner">
  <div class="container">
   <div class="nav-collapse collapse">
    <ul id="tab" class="nav">
     <li class="active"><a href="#Tab1" data-toggle="tab">Tab1</a></li>
     <li><a href="#Tab2" data-toggle="tab">Tab2</a></li>
     <li><a href="#Tab3" data-toggle="tab">Tab3</a></li>
    </ul>
    <a class="brand" href="#">NavTab Demo</a>
   </div>
  </div>
 </div>
</div>
<div class="container-fluid">
 <div class="row-fluid">
  <div class="span12">
   <div class="tab-content">
    <div class="tab-pane active" id="Tab1">
...

Answer 1

I don’t see any obvious problem in wiring your nav links as tabs.

You just need to ommit tab classes not to override your navbar styles, and don’t forget the data- attributes (if needed).

Then you have to use the JavaScript activation as specified in the docs (or use the data-toggle="tab" attribute).

Everything should be working.

Edit : for posterity, you do need to include ONE of bootstrap-tab.js or bootstrap.js (or the minified version) and the associated css files too.