Combining sidemenu navigation with nested tabbed interface?

yeah in your controller have $state as a dependency and do something like:

$scope.current_state = null;
var set_current_state = function() {
    var split = $state.current.name.split('.');
    $scope.current_state = split[split.length - 1];
};
$rootScope.$on('$stateChangeSuccess', set_current_state);
set_current_state();

then in your template you can do something like:

<a class="tab-item" ng-class="{'active': tab.state_name === current_state}" ...>

you’ll have the active class when you’re on the right state (maybe you’ll have to tweak your state logic depending on how you use ui-router)

By default it’ll be brigther, icons will be inverted but you can add whatever you want to it!