The multiple nested views functionality of the ui-router is very nice - you can easily jump from one state of your app to another.

Sometimes you might want to change the URL, but sometimes not. I feel like the concept of state should be separate/optional from routing.

Here's a plunker that shows what I mean. This is a fork of one of the plunkers in the ui-router documentation, with 2 minor changes noted below:

.state('route1', {

        url: /route, // <---- URL IS SHARED WITH ROUTE2

        views: {

            viewA: {

                template: route1.viewA

            },

            viewB: {

                template: route1.viewB

            }

        }

    })

    .state('route2', {

        url: /route, // <---- URL IS SHARED WITH ROUTE1

        views: {

            viewA: {

                template: route2.viewA

            },

            viewB: {

                template: route2.viewB

            }

        }

    })

This seems to work - the URL stays the same. Again, how much redundant work is done here? Is this an approved/tested usage?

It would be nice if you could omit the url from a state..

UPDATE: You can omit a url from a state. plunker

Update question: Is this an approved/tested usage?