I\'m working on building up an interface that I want to function as a \"tabbed browsing\" sort of function. Each of these tabs has already been written as an action and the
I'm not entirely sure what your exact problem is, however you can disable the layout:
$this->_helper->layout->disableLayout();
Then the requested Action will just display it's view script, which you can load into the tab.
Any authorisation code you have will function as normal and you can display the requested view script for the Action, or not depending on if they have access.