Well, there are a couple of ways to achieve that effect.
If you are loading dynamic content, meaning, content that depends on the user such as a database derived information, you can use AJAX to update the section you want to change when a user clicks on a tab.
if the content isnt dynamic, then you can set it up in your html the way you would like to look, and use the CSS property "display", and toggle that either "none", or "block" (or table or blank) to show / hide the element you want to switch.
This usually requires changing the visibility of two items at once, but it's not that complicated. All you have to do is hold the current viewed element in a variable.
the way you change the css property is via Javascript, and you can either change it's class or the property itself.
take a look at www.prototypejs.org
it's a popular library with both AJAX and interactive features like show/hide.
if you are a js beginner it might be worth taking some time with it.
The tab itself you can create which ever way you like, its really just using javascript to trigger a function that will do the change.
