The HTML content of this string is shown in a tab title while remote content is loading. Pass in empty string to deactivate that behavior. An span element must be present in the A tag of the title, for the spinner content to be visible.
Get or set the spinner option, after init.
//getter
var spinner = $( ".selector" ).tabs( "option", "spinner" );
//setter
$( ".selector" ).tabs( "option", "spinner", 'Retrieving data...' );
SO your code would be:
$(function() {
$("#tabs").tabs({
ajaxOptions: {
error: function(xhr, status, index, anchor) {
$(anchor.hash).html("I tried to load this, but couldn't. Try one of the other links?");
},
spinner: ''
}
});
});