A method and system for controlling a tabbed pane (305) in a graphical user interface of a data processing system. The tabbed pane consists of several overlying panels (230) resembling a stack of pieces of paper lying on top of one another, with only the topmost panel that is visible to a user; a selection tab (235) is attached to each panel. When the number of the tabs is high, they are organised into two or more alignments. In the tabbed pane of the invention, the alignments are arranged along different edges of the visible panel. Therefore, the tabs are distributed along the border of the visible panel, so that each time a tab is selected by the user the corresponding panel is popped up and made visible without affecting the position of the other tabs.