How to set up sidemenu with tabs in Ionic?

Question

In my opinion having a sidemenu, for things like settings and about pages, combined with tabs for the main app is a pretty essential and standard app interface. Things like

Answer 1

I think your routing is a bit off - your child states for the tabs aren't fully declared. You've declared them like this

.state('tab.tab1', {

...and you've never declared the parent tab state. So they are left 'hanging' until the parent state is declared. ui-router will just ignore them until this happens.

Try this

config(function($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider) {
  $stateProvider

  .state('app', {
    url: "/app",
    abstract: true,
    templateUrl: "templates/menu.html",
    controller: 'AppCtrl'
  })

  .state('app.tabs', {
    url: "/tabs",
    views: {
      'menuContent': {
        templateUrl: "templates/tabs.html"
      }
    }
  })

.state('app.tabs.tab1', {
      url: '/tab1',
      views: {
        'tab-tab1': {
          templateUrl: 'templates/tab-tab1.html',
          controller: 'tab1Ctrl'
        }
      }
    })

.state('app.tabs.tab2', {
      url: '/tab2',
      views: {
        'tab-tab2': {
          templateUrl: 'templates/tab-tab2.html',
          controller: 'tab2Ctrl'
        }
      }
    })

.state('app.tabs.extras', {
    url: '/extras',
    views: {
      'tab-extras': {
        templateUrl: 'templates/tab-extras.html',
        controller: 'AccountCtrl'
      }
    }
  })

    .state('app.about', {
      url: "/about",
      views: {
        'menuContent': {
          templateUrl: "templates/about.html",
          controller: 'aboutCtrl'
        }
      }
  });
  // if none of the above states are matched, use this as the fallback
  $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/app/tabs');
});

And better / clearer to use ui-sref rather than href in your tabs template - easier to see what state something maps to

<ion-tabs class="tabs-icon-top tabs-color-active-assertive">  

  <ion-tab title="tab1" icon="ion-man" ui-sref="app.tabs.tab1">
    <ion-nav-view name="tab-tab1"></ion-nav-view>
  </ion-tab>

  <ion-tab title="tab2" icon="ion-person-stalker" ui-sref="app.tabs.tab2">
    <ion-nav-view name="tab-tab2"></ion-nav-view>
  </ion-tab>

  <ion-tab title="Extras" icon="ion-heart" ui-sref="app.tabs.extras">
    <ion-nav-view name="tab-extras"></ion-nav-view>
  </ion-tab>

</ion-tabs>

Not tested it but I think that should fix it! Any errors in the console BTW?