Some things are implied, hence whenever there is a collection of items, such as tabs in a tab panel, searching is imminent. You may never need to implement a search box (as with Google), where the user is required to enter data with which you'll search for a tab, but it's likely that you will have a UI with a navigation tree on the side and a tab panel in the middle, with the intention of allowing the user to click on leaf nodes on the navigation tree, to open a new tab (or select it if already opened) in the tab panel. For such a navigation system to work, you must first search for the tab associated to the tree node clicked (there has to be some relation by configuration or customization), if found, we select it to make it the active tab, and if not found, we create a new tab and attach it to the tab panel. Problem solved!
