How to change tabs programmatically in jquery-ui 1.9?

The select method is deprecated since 1.9, and was removed in 1.10. Use the active option instead.

Example (jsfiddle also provided):

<script>
    $(document).ready(function() {
      $("#tabs").tabs();

      // assume you want to change to the 3rd tab after 3 seconds
      setTimeout(function() {
          $("#tabs").tabs("option", "active", 2);
      }, 3000);
    });
</script>

<div id="tabs">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="#tabs-1">Tab 1</a></li>
        <li><a href="#tabs-2">Tab 2</a></li>
        <li><a href="#tabs-3">Tab 3</a></li>
    </ul>

    <div id="tabs-1"><p>Container 1</p></div>
    <div id="tabs-2"><p>Container 2</p></div>
    <div id="tabs-3"><p>Container 3</p></div>
</div>

Selection according id is very straight forward as Sonjz specified above ... but selection according to tabId is trickier .. I just want to share it in case anybody needs

var index = $('#tabs a[href="#tab_id"]').parent().index();
$("#tabs").tabs("option", "active", index);

Try this

$('#tabs a[href="#tabs-2"]').tab('show')

Here #tabs-2 means the tab you want to switch.