Summary

Improve the management/heuristics used to handle rendering the frontend st.tabs & st.expander React components.

Scenarios such as conditionally rendering elements before st.tabs or st.expander causes the unmount/remount of the component, therefore losing its FE state/selected tab. This is expected behavior based on the components in their current implementation, but it can be improved.

When we refactor st.tabs, we should also examine the heuristic we used to assess the selected tab:

When the number or names of the tabs change, we're now looking for the name of the active tab in the list of new tabs, and activating that one. This has the advantage that you can insert tabs and still keep the current tab active. But it comes at the cost of tabs switching when you simply rename them

Additional Context

See related issues:

• Component in tab 2 triggers app to jump back to tab 1 #6257
• Changing name to a tab after a rerun, switch to the first tab  #7435
• Expander resets its expanded state when new elements are included. #2360

More expansive feature request for FE/BE communication of tab state:

• st.tabs: know and control state #6004
  More expansive feature request for FE/BE communication of expander state:
• st.expander expanded/collapsed state #2399