Create tabs using something like this echo JHtml::_('tabs.start', 'signInPane', array('startOffset' => 2, 'useCookie' => false)); and anything else that's necessary to create the rest of the tabs pane.
Visit the tabs on the frontend.
Expected result
Have the 3rd tab (because of zero indexing) be open. And upon selecting another tab and refreshing, have the 3rd tab still open, and not the last active tab.
This was giving me a headache, and apparently I'm not the first one:
http://joomla.stackexchange.com/questions/5675/how-do-i-set-options-for-jhtmltabs-with-bootstrap