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Silverstripe Better Tabs

Tame CMS forms that have too many tabs. When a tabset's tab bar would wrap onto more than one row, the overflowing tabs collapse into a "More ▾" dropdown so the bar stays on a single row. The active tab is always kept visible.

Works with the tabs you already have — including nested tabs (addFieldToTab('Root.Tab.SubTab', $field)), which Silverstripe supports out of the box.

Requirements

• Silverstripe Framework 6 / Admin 3
• PHP 8.3+

Installation

Run dev/build?flush=1 once. No configuration or code changes are needed — it enhances the existing CMS tab bars automatically.

How it works

The module adds a small CSS + JS enhancement to the CMS (via LeftAndMain.extra_requirements_javascript / _css). The script:

• watches each .ss-tabset > ul.nav-tabs — and the CMS primary tab bar (jQuery-UI tabs, e.g. the SiteConfig "Settings" form, where the root tabs are promoted to the header); when one wraps, it hides the trailing tabs and lists them in a "More ▾" dropdown (keeping the active tab visible, and flagging "More" when the active tab lives inside it);
• leaves the tabs' native click behaviour intact — the real tab elements stay in the DOM (just hidden) and the dropdown proxies clicks to them;
• re-applies on window/panel resize (ResizeObserver) and after the CMS swaps in new content via PJAX (MutationObserver).

It is dependency-free (no jQuery/entwine required) and makes no server-side or data changes.

The overflow menu is on by default. If you only want the other features (icons, colours, dropdown mode, breadcrumb) and would rather leave the tab bar native, turn it off in YAML:

Tab icons & colours

All configured in PHP, in getCMSFields() — no YAML per tab. Every setter returns the field, so they chain:

Icons

Give any tab an icon with setIcon(). Use a built-in CMS font-icon name (without the font-icon- prefix):

Tab::setIcon() is built into Silverstripe; this module adds the same to TabSet so a tab group can have an icon too. Icons are vertically aligned with the label and carried into the overflow dropdown.

Font Awesome icons

Pass Font Awesome classes to setIcon():

Enable Font Awesome in the CMS from your project YAML (e.g. app/_config/better-tabs.yml):

Colours

Colour a tab's label (and optionally its background):

Works on both leaf Tabs and TabSets, at every level and in the overflow dropdown (text, icon and background colours all propagate). A tab given a background colour fades slightly while inactive, so the selected tab stays obvious.

Icons on the CMS view tabs

The edit-form view tabs (Content / Settings / History, and the like) aren't Tab/TabSet fields, so setIcon() can't reach them. Give them icons with a small YAML map — each key is matched against a path segment of the tab's link:

Sub-tabs as a dropdown

By default a tab group's sub-tabs render as an inline segmented pill bar. For a group with many (or deeply nested) sub-tabs you can instead turn it into a website-style dropdown menu: the group's own tab gets a ▾ caret and, on hover/click, opens a menu of its sub-tabs (groups nested inside open as flyout submenus). All of that group's in-body sub-tab bars are hidden — navigation happens through the menu, which keeps deep forms tidy. Opt in per tab group, in PHP:

setMode('pills') (the default) switches it back. Only the group you mark changes; every other tabset keeps the pill bar. Flyouts open to the right, flipping left only when short on space. Pairs well with the breadcrumb.

Theming (CSS variables)

The module's default colours are CSS custom properties — override any of them in your admin CSS (each falls back to the matching Bootstrap/CMS variable):

Breadcrumb for deep tabs

For tabsets nested two or more levels deep, you can show a breadcrumb of the active path (e.g. "Deep › Account › Profile"), rendered just below the deepest sub-tab strip. The crumbs are clickable — selecting one jumps to that tab (resetting the levels below it to their first tab, like clicking the tab itself would).

Enable it per form in getCMSFields():

The second argument shows the breadcrumb on all tabs — including top-level tabs that have no sub-tabs (rendered as a single crumb) — so the breadcrumb is consistent across the whole form.

Call it on a specific tab group instead of Root to scope the breadcrumb to just that tab and its children — no breadcrumb shows on the other top-level tabs:

Or turn it on globally for every CMS form, in your project YAML:

Translations

The "More" overflow label is translatable via Silverstripe i18n, shown in the CMS user's locale. Translations ship for en, nl, de, it, es, fr (lang/<locale>.yml).

License

BSD-3-Clause.