This is a work in progress (with ongoing changes) that is being developed with current versions of Emacs Trunk.
The most recent version of Tabbar can be found here: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TabBarMode
The file init-tabbar.el has been configured to use five frames (SYSTEM; MAIN; WANDERLUST; ORG; MISCELLANEOUS). Buffers may be associated with frames through the lawlist-buffer-list -- buffers are added with associate-current-buffer, and buffers are removed with disassociate-current-buffer. The function lawlist-buffer-list-reset wipes the entire slate clean as to the selected frame.
The function lawlist-find-file and the functions for display-buffer-alist, along with a modified version of ns-find-file, create / locate frames with specific names based upon regexp of buffer name or file name.
