It’s been so long, I forget how I set this up…. I’ll drop the code I use to highlight current page in my nav menu, see if it helps….
IN my header.php (where my menu is) I use this for my menu:
<div id="mymenucontainer">
<div id="mymenu">
<ul>
<?php if (is_page()) { $highlight = "page_item"; } else {$highlight = "page_item current_page_item"; } ?>
<li class="<?php echo $highlight; ?>"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
so that part of the code sets up my menu, which you would adjust the wp_list_pages part to suit your needs…but it adds a class of current_page_item to the active tab in the menu
#mymenucontainer{
height:30px;
background:#300707;
display:block;
padding:0px 0 0px 0px;
border-top:1px solid #6b0404;
}
#mymenu{
position:relative;
display:block;
height:30px;
font-size:13px;
font-weight:normal;
font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Helvitica,sans-serif;
}
#mymenu ul{
margin:0px;
padding:0px 0px 0 10px;
list-style-type:none;
width:auto;
float:left;
}
#mymenu ul li{
display:block;
float:left;
margin:0 10px 0 10px;
}
#mymenu ul li a{
display:block;
float:left;
color:#cc99aa;
text-align: center;
text-decoration:none;
padding:7px 0px 0 0px;
height: 23px;
}
#mymenu ul li a:hover,#mymenu ul li.current_page_item a{
color:#d1cbc6;
height: 23px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration:underline;
}
#mymenu ul li .current_page_item a,#mymenu ul li .current_page_item a:hover{
color:#020202;
width: 106px; height: 23px;
}
obviously you don’t need all my styling, I’m too lazy to truncate. But the last 2 css entries handle the current_page_item link/hover, etc…. which is the active tab