custom/editor tabs order in sitecore - tabs

Question

I'm trying to find a way to change order of sitecore custom / editor tabs. by default sitecore displays custom tabs, content tab and dynamic tabs, and according to
https://www.markstiles.net/Blog/2011/02/27/editor-tabs-in-sitecore.aspx
the only way to change order of tabs is to dig into sitecore. sitecore forum isn't helpful either. any ideas if this is configurable in sitecore? above mentioned post is pretty old and sth might have changed since then, but I haven't found any info about it.

Answer 1

As of Sitecore 8.0 update 3, the sitecore code for retrieving the tabs is still the same with the addition of the buckets tab:
Retrieved from Sitecore.Client.dll in the Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentManager.Editor class
private static List<Editor.EditorTab> GetEditorTabs(Item item, Editor.Sections sections)
{
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(sections, "sections");
List<Editor.EditorTab> editorTabs = new List<Editor.EditorTab>();
Editor.GetCustomEditorTab(item, editorTabs);
Editor.GetCustomEditorTabs(item, editorTabs);
Editor.GetContentTab(item, sections, editorTabs);
if (InternalSettings.ItemBucketsEnabled)
{
Editor.GetNewSearchTab(item, sections, editorTabs);
}
Editor.GetDynamicTabs(item, editorTabs);
return editorTabs;
}
So unfortunately, it looks like this is still the order by which they get rendered. As the article mentions, this could potentially be overridden, but likely to be quite involved.

Answer 2

I've achieved this slightly different. Not 100% satisfied with the solution, but it works until there is a better option.
In my custom tab, that displays as the first tab and therefore the active tab when I select an item. I have added the following JavaScript code to change the active tab back to the standard Sitecore Tab.
parent.scContent.onEditorTabClick(this, null, "Content");
The code goes up to the parent window as the Tab is an iFrame and set the active tab to the "Content" tab.
My custom tab is a SPEAK tab running on Sitecore 8. Here is the SPEAK javascript PageCode for reference.
https://github.com/sobek1985/SitecoreContentEditorTabs/blob/Complete/SitecoreContentEditorTabs/SitecoreContentEditorTabs.js
And a blog post i wrote on the subject too: http://mikerobbins.co.uk/2015/07/14/sitecore-content-editor-tabs-in-speak/