Android :: Slight Misunderstanding With Tab Activity Views And Activity

am not too experienced in android and i am just using the TabActivity, so please bear with me. i keep seeing post about not using activites in Tabhost but views. and am not sure which is which and if thats the reason of my latest headache? i have a code with 4 tabs like this:

// Category TabActivity class
tab.setContent(new Intent(this, Mylist.class));
tab1.setContent(new Intent(this, Mylist.class));
tab2.setContent(new Intent(this, Mylist.class));

and each tab is showing the result of a method in the Mylist Activity.is that using an activity in a tab or displaying a view? whats the difference?.i have a context menu on an item selected in the Mylist Activity which updates the list. how can i reflect the changes in the list back to the tab in other to display that particular method in the Mylist class, that was set as the tabs content. obviously this will change if i updated or deleted an item from the list when the tab is shown. i think its possible with onResume(), but don't know what to call there or is there any better way?in the Mylist class, i have tried this little piece of code to restart the TabActivity:myAdapter.deleteItem(id);

fillData(); //
Intent refereshCategory = new Intent(this, Category.class);
startActivity(refereshCategory);

its restarting the activity after the item have been deleted, but how can i only show the tab whose view was in focus when it restarts and i don't want fillData() method to be shown as it does not have to do with the tabs. i hope i made myself clear enough