navigate to tab using window.location.hash without refreshing

Yes, this is possible, as long as your Tab Set and each of the Tabs all have Unique Ids (configurable through the properties of the Tab Set and of each Tab).

Here’s a simple page example that has a “Jump to Tab” button, which runs a JavaScript Snippet called “Jump to Tab”, that lets you enter the Unique Id of the Tab Panel you want to jump to, and then

(1) Updates window.location.hash with this Tab Panel’s Unique Id
(2) Navigates to that Tab using jQuery UI’s Tab navigation API

Here is a screenshot of the page:

And here is the JavaScript Snippet by itself:

var tabUniqueId = prompt('Which Tab do you want to jump to?','FrenchOnion');
var $ = skuid.$;
var tabset = $('#MyTabSet');
var tabPanels = tabset.children('.ui-tabs-panel');
var tabIndex;
$.each(tabPanels,function(i,tabPanel){
   if ($(tabPanel).prop('id')===tabUniqueId) {
       tabIndex = i;
       return false;
   } 
});
if (tabIndex < 0) {
    alert('Could not find a Tab called '' + tabUniqueId + ''');
} else {
    // Update the hash
    var scrollmem = $('html,body').scrollTop();
    window.location.hash = tabUniqueId;
    $('html,body').scrollTop(scrollmem);
    // Navigate to a particular tab
    tabset.tabs( "option", "active", tabIndex );
}

Something wonky with the post for stuff in pre.

Hells yes though! Certainly going to take advantage of this.

Don’t suppose popups can be automatically opened since they tabs as well?

Yeah the pre-formatted text is really wonky right now, not sure why.

How is the popup in question normally opened?

Row action. 

Any text missing from what you pasted?