title: change bootstrap active tab without having nav
body: <p>i have a modal and in my modal there are 3 tabs but the user cannot see any nav-tabs to change the tabs there are some buttons in the modal-body to switch between specific tabs.
  i want when this modal opens every time i see a specific tab(the first one always). what happens now is that i see the last closed tab.</p>
  
  <p>here is a sample of my code</p>
  
  <pre><code>        &lt;button class="btn btn-default" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#theModalID""&gt;open modal&lt;/button&gt;
  
          &lt;div class="modal fade" id="theModalID" role="dialog"&gt;
          &lt;div class="tab-content"&gt;
          &lt;div id="tab1" class="tab-pane fade in active"&gt;
              &lt;!-- tab 1 --&gt;
          &lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div id="tab2" class="tab-pane fade"&gt;
              &lt;!-- tab 2 --&gt;
              &lt;button type="button" class="btn btn-default" data-toggle="tab" href="#tab3"&gt;tab3&lt;/button&gt;
          &lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div id="tab3" class="tab-pane fade"&gt;
              &lt;!-- tab 3 --&gt;
              &lt;button type="button" class="btn btn-default" data-toggle="tab" href="#tab1"&gt;tab1&lt;/button&gt;
          &lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>i want on modal show every time see tab 1 as the active tab.
  i mention again there is no nav-tabs to switch between tabs.
  tnx </p>