modal Dialog appended to ui-tabs-panel: Error: Cannot call method '_focusTabbable'

I am using the Dialog widget's new "appendTo" option to associate a modal dialog with a particular tab panel, so that when the tab is deactivated, the dialog is hidden. However, when I re-activate the tab containing the dialog, I get the following error:

'''Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method '_focusTabbable' of undefined'''

(that is the text in Chrome; Firefox produces a less descriptive message)

You may wonder how I am switching tabs if the dialog is modal: I manipulate the ui-widget-overlay so that it does not obstruct the tab handles. For this reason, I worry that maybe this is too far outside the expected use case to be considered a bug.

Here is a minimal jsfiddle reproducing the error: http://jsfiddle.net/jsYCR/1/

For a simpler example which uses show() and hide() instead of tabs, but ''fails'' to reproduce the error, see http://jsfiddle.net/jsYCR/

This issue seems related to http://bugs.jqueryui.com/ticket/9000, but that issue was closed as 'fixed'.

I tried to narrow down the problem, and I think it's related to this selector on line 5766 of jquery-ui-1.10.2.custom.js:

$(".ui-dialog:visible:last .ui-dialog-content")

It seems this is getting evaluated before the dialog is visible.