[Plugin: Tabbed Widgets] Wreaking Havoc on Other Plugins

I love the idea of this plugin, and it’s been really helpful when we’ve been able to get it to work. The problem I keep running into, though, is that it seems to be incompatible with a large number of other plugins.

This seems to stem from the fact that the Tabbed Widgets plugin attempts to load the front-end widgets for every widget that’s added anywhere on the page. A lot of plugins use completely different code to actually generate the widget than they do to display the backend widget editing form.

The latest example came from trying to use the Gravity Forms widget on a site where Tabbed Widgets is enabled (we’re not even using Tabbed Widgets on that site at the moment; but it is activated for the entire network).

I created a Gravity Form, went to the Widgets page, dragged the Forms widget into one of my sidebars and saved it. I checked the site; and everything looked fine. Then, when I went back to the Widgets page, my browser spit out a bunch of JavaScript errors (presumably because Gravity Forms doesn’t load the necessary jQuery plugins to make the front-end widget work when you’re not actually viewing the front-end of the website).

This is just one example. In other instances, I’ve had fatal PHP errors thrown because the code that generates the front-end widget relies on PHP classes and methods that aren’t invoked on the back-end.

Is there any way to use Tabbed Widgets without it trying to render all of my widgets when I’m in the admin area? Thanks.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tabbed-widgets/