this news is a bit late, but I got involved in my first GPL code, and contributed a slew of features to the HeaderTabs extension which was released on December 13th, 2011.

Changes:

• Extension:Configure support
• new 1.17+ options:
  • jquery to use RL
  • $htRenderSingleTab
  • $htAutomaticNamespaces
  • $htDefaultFirstTab
  • $htDisableDefaultToc
  • $htGenerateTabTocs
  • $htEditTabLink
  • $htStyle
    • style ‘jquery-large’
    • style ‘bare’
  • history navigation
  • mediawiki TOC links now work