Search Box Highlighting

Here is my scenario:

I have a webpage with anywhere between 1-8 datatables on the page simultaneously.
These tables use tabs across the top to seperate them visually.

I am trying to achieve 2 things here:

1 - When the user enters a search term in any of the search boxes, it should populate the search boxes on each tab and filter all datatables.
I have been directed to fnFilterAll before, but not entirely sure how to use that.

2 - If I am on Tab #2 and I click another tab, I would like to highlight the wording already in the searchbox. This would remove the neccessity for the user to click in the box and remove the wording, they can simply start typing.

Thanks,

SQLGuru