jQuery UI Dialog window loaded within AJAX style jQuery UI Tabs

Solution 1:

Nothing easier than that man. Try this one:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<html>
<head>
    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.1/themes/base/jquery-ui.css" type="text/css" />
    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.1/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
    <style>
        .loading { background: url(/img/spinner.gif) center no-repeat !important}
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <a class="ajax" href="http://www.google.com">
      Open as dialog
    </a>

    <script type="text/javascript">
    $(function (){
        $('a.ajax').click(function() {
            var url = this.href;
            // show a spinner or something via css
            var dialog = $('<div style="display:none" class="loading"></div>').appendTo('body');
            // open the dialog
            dialog.dialog({
                // add a close listener to prevent adding multiple divs to the document
                close: function(event, ui) {
                    // remove div with all data and events
                    dialog.remove();
                },
                modal: true
            });
            // load remote content
            dialog.load(
                url, 
                {}, // omit this param object to issue a GET request instead a POST request, otherwise you may provide post parameters within the object
                function (responseText, textStatus, XMLHttpRequest) {
                    // remove the loading class
                    dialog.removeClass('loading');
                }
            );
            //prevent the browser to follow the link
            return false;
        });
    });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Note that you can't load remote from local, so you'll have to upload this to a server or whatever. Also note that you can't load from foreign domains, so you should replace href of the link to a document hosted on the same domain (and here's the workaround).

Cheers

Solution 2:

To avoid adding extra divs when clicking on the link multiple times, and avoid problems when using the script to display forms, you could try a variation of @jek's code.

$('a.ajax').live('click', function() {
    var url = this.href;
    var dialog = $("#dialog");
    if ($("#dialog").length == 0) {
        dialog = $('<div id="dialog" style="display:hidden"></div>').appendTo('body');
    } 

    // load remote content
    dialog.load(
            url,
            {},
            function(responseText, textStatus, XMLHttpRequest) {
                dialog.dialog();
            }
        );
    //prevent the browser to follow the link
    return false;
});`