do you know this ?

how to place buttons on tabs in controlP5 :

http://www.sojamo.de/libraries/controlP5/examples/controllers/ControlP5tab/ControlP5tab.pde

See the controlEvent() method in the example Chrisir linked to. You can store the current tab's id in a global variable and then use that variable in your draw() loop to choose which stuff to draw aka only draw the stuff you want in each respective tab via if-else or a switch. See the reference for an explanation of those latter methods.

hey thx for the response but which reference are you talking about and i actually can't understand the global varaiable thing i'm really sry i'm so new to this.

Note that I've moved this thread to Contributed Library Questions because it concerns a contributed library.

I meant the Processing reference: http://processing.org/reference/

Here is an example of what I described. A global variable is a variable that the whole sketch has access to. Usually it's written at the top of the sketch after the import statements.

Code Example

1. import controlP5.*;
2. ControlP5 cp5;
3.  
4. int currentTab = 1; // global variable to keep track of current tab
5.  
6. void setup() {
7.   size(500, 500);
8.   cp5 = new ControlP5(this);
9.   cp5.getTab("default").activateEvent(true).setLabel("Tab One").setId(1);
10.   cp5.addTab("Tab Two").activateEvent(true).setId(2);
11.   cp5.addTab("Tab Three").activateEvent(true).setId(3);
12.   textAlign(CENTER, CENTER);
13.   textSize(200);
14.   smooth();
15. }
16.  
17. void draw() {
18.   background(0);
19.   switch(currentTab) {
20.     case 1: fill(0, 255, 0); rect(50, 50, width/2, height/2); break;
21.     case 2: fill(0, 0, 255); ellipse(width/2, height/2, width/2, width/2); break;
22.     case 3: fill(0, 255, 255); rect(0, height/3, width, height/3); break;
23.   }
24.   fill(255, 0, 0);
25.   text(currentTab, width/2, height/2);
26. }
27.  
28. void controlEvent(ControlEvent theControlEvent) {
29.   if (theControlEvent.isTab()) {
30.     currentTab = theControlEvent.getTab().getId();
31.   }
32. }