Angular is one of the most utilized web application frameworks of recent times. Explore this blog, right now to know the most trending Angular 8 Features.
Angular is known for its robust web application and single-page application developments. Angular 8 is easy to understand and quick in web-app development. Let us see what are the features that Angular 8 is sported with.
Google has finally released its latest Angular 8 version a few weeks ago. The latest version has bought a multitude of attractive features that have made Angular 8 unique compared to its previous versions. Also, the Angular team has gone several steps closer to the final release of Angular 9. In this blog, we will discuss the top features of Angular 8.
What’s New in Angular 8
Within the span of seven years, Google has subsequently and frequently released updated versions of the Angular framework. This indicates its devotion to providing a highly secure, advanced and contemporary web development framework for modern requirements.
Angular is the most popular front-end development program for building mobile apps, desktop apps and SPAs. The Angular 8.0 has brought with itself an impressive list of changes and improvements. Let’s explore some of the significant features of Angular 8.0
Differential Loading of Modern JavaScript
One of the significant aspects of custom web application is that it should be compatible with all the major browsers including Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and others.
Legacy JavaScript (ES5) and Modern JavaScript (ES2015+) as the new Command line interface.
Differential loading is a strategy that enables the command line interface (CLI) to create two separate bundles as per the uploaded apps.
The CLI will automatically configure the JS bundles based on the client’s browsers.
The correct bundle will be loaded automatically by the browser & will be able to download smaller, more efficient app bundles that load and render faster.
If you use ng update, Angular CLI will update your tsconfig.json. Angular CLI looks at the target JS level in your tsconfig.json to determine whether or not to take advantage of Differential Loading.
When the target is set to es2015, we generate and label two bundles. At runtime, the browser uses attributes on the script tag to load the right bundle.
Modern JS :
Legacy JS :
Angular.io will approximately be 40kB of initial bundle size for modern browsers. Applications generally save 7–20% of their bundle size, depending on the number of modern JavaScript features.
Backwards Compatibility of the Angular Router
Angular 8 has added backward compatibility mode to Angular router that makes migration easy from older versions to the latest ones. Thanks to $route APIs which permits lazy loading of Angular JS apps. Hence, it allows developers to upgrade and transfer larger projects easily.
Bazel Support
Bazel is one of the most speculated built-in tools introduced by Google with the release of Angular 8.0. However, Google is already using Bazel support internally for a long time. Recently, it has decided to present it as open source. It is available as opt-in and is expected to be included in
@angular/cli in Version 9.
Some of the Bazel key advantages are:
One tool for building an application for both the frontend and backend.
Developers can now build applications as incremental build and deploy the war files.
Faster build time, although it normally takes time for the first build but now less time will be consumed for the concurrent builds.
Bazel offers some out of the box innovative features, including the Eject the Bazel file, which is used to a hidden file by default.
Web Worker Support (PWA)
It is good news for Angular developers that the web worker and delegate support are anticipating additions in the new release. Adding web workers and delegates in an application demands a lot of time and efforts when you wish to run all as a background process.
With the Angular Service Worker and the Angular CLI built-in PWA support, Angular developers can now take benefits from the increased reliability and performance – without needing to code against low-level APIs, developers can achieve native-like application. Similarly, it can enhance the speed performance by shifting the tasks from the main thread.
Introducing Angular IVY
The Angular developers were speculating the release of Angular IVY for long. It’s finally here. IVY render engine is an essential feature of Angular 8.0 as it uses incremental DOM and forms the foundation of future innovations in the Angular framework.
It changes how the framework internally works, without changing the Angular apps. The Ivy project basically rewrites the Angular compiler and runtime code in order to reach better build times, better build sizes with tree-shaking and new features like lazy loading of components instead of modules.
Also, Google has introduced a preview version of IVY to receive the reviews from active, passionate and dedicated Angular developers in the Angular development community.
If you want to enable Ivy in your project, just instruct the Angular CLI to enable it using the –enable-ivy command:
Some of the advantages of Angular 8.0 with Ivy:
Faster re-build time
Improved template type checking
Improved payload size
Great backwards compatibility
Generated code that is easier to read and debug at runtime
Two main concepts on which IVY works:
Tree shakable (To remove the unused code from the application)
Memory saving using Incremental DOM
Lazy Loading
Angular 8.0 added support for dynamic imports in router configuration which enables the use of standard dynamic import syntax, instead of a custom string to find out missing or misspelled modules in our application.
Support for New Angular CLI Builders/Architect API
Angular 8.0 makes way for Builders API. It offers a functionality where you can override commands as ng build, ng test and ng lint. Basically, the builders are functions that implement the logic and behavior for a task.
Below is the snippet from .angular-cli.json in the Angular 8 project. You can notice how all commands now have an option called builder from Angular and how you can easily override by providing your own builder.
You can write our own builder using below mentioned API’s.
BuilderContext
BuilderOutput
createBuilder
Angular Firebase
The Angular developers can now upgrade to Angular CLI by using Angular Firebase. The Angular Firebase helps in deploying the web and mobile applications in several ways. The Firebase also offers to deploy commands to deploy the applications.
The Angular CLI is continuously improving, and now the ng-build, ng-test and ng-run are equipped to be extended by third-party libraries.
Add support for TypeScript 3.4
In this newest version of Angular, Angular team has updated Angular’s dependencies which include tools like RxJS and TypeScript to v3.4. Now all the new apps generated via the Angular CLI will use the same newest version of TypeScript by default. Further, 3.4 will provide the following features:
Faster subsequent builds with the –incremental flag
Higher order type inference from generic functions
Improvements for ReadonlyArray and readonly tuples
Type-checking for globalThis
Conclusively
The Angular framework is widely used for creating different types of web and cross-platform mobile applications. The latest Angular 8.0 version is going to ease the life of Angular developers a lot by introducing advanced features described in the post.
Officially Published on JS Panther as Top Features Of Angular 8 on Dec 3 2019
An exciting release of Angular 8.0 with lovely features, including the much-anticipated IVY compiler. The new features added a new level to its core framework, including the Angular Command Line Interface and the Angular material library. The latest release also allowed major partner launches including the NativeScript, Angular console, Angular Fire and Stack Blitz. Besides, it has the most speculated Ivy render engine for building an excellent user interface.
Introduction:
Google is subsequently and frequently releasing updated versions of JS-based Angular framework within the shortest span of seven years. It indicates its devotion to providing a highly secure, advanced, and contemporary web development framework for modern requirements. Angular is the most popular front-end development program for building mobile apps, desktop apps, and SPAs. The Angular 8.0 released with an impressive list of changes and improvements. Let’s explore some of the significant features of Angular 8.0.
1. Differential Loading of Modern JavaScript
One of the significant aspects of the custom web application is that it should be compatible with all the major browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, FireFox, and others. In the new Angular release, Google has introduced the following advanced features and functionality.
Legacy JavaScript (ES5) and Modern JavaScript (ES2015+) as the new Command line interface.
The differential loading is a strategy, which enables the command line interface (CLI) to create two separate bundles as per the uploaded applications.
With the new Angular 8.0, the modern Syntax leverages built-in support for modern browsers. Unfortunately, many browsers are still missing the required support.
The CLI will automatically configure with the JS bundles based on the client’s browsers.
Now, you will have improved loading speed and TTI (Time to Interactive) while loading apps in modern browsers.
2. Backwards Compatibility of the Angular Router
Now, migration is easy from older versions of Angular framework to the latest versions. The latest angular 8.0 supports backward compatibility of the Angular router. It becomes possible thanks to $route APIs, which permits lazy loading of Angular JS apps. Hence, it allows developers to upgrade and transfer larger projects easily.
3. Introducing Angular IVY
The Angular developers were speculating the release of Angular IVY since so long. IVY render engine is an essential feature of Angular 8.0, as it forms the foundation of future innovations in the Angular framework.
With the release of Angular 8.0, Google has introduced a preview version of IVY to receive the reviews from the active and passionate Angular developers in the Angular development community.
Although Angular IVY is still in its production phase, Angular 8 developers can generate vital new bundles and can perform incremental compilation.
Ivy is the latest Angular compiler and efficient development set of tools. Many practical aspects of the Angular have changed after converting to IVY, but the existing application can work in a similar fashion. However, the size of the bundles has altered only.
4. Bazel Support
Bazel was also the most speculated built-in tool introduced by Google with the release of Angular 8.0. However, Google already is using Bazel support internally for a long time. Recently, it has decided to present it as open source.
Bazel is introduced as the opt-in option, as it is yet not ready and it is expected to be included as a command line interface in Angular 9.
Bazel offers some out of the box innovative features, including the Eject the Bazel file, which is used to a hidden file by default. The Angular developers now are capable of building or deploying only what has changed rather than changing the entire app.
They can do so by ejecting the Bazel file. The first build is time-consuming with the Bazel, but the rest of the build will consume lesser time.
5. Web Worker Support
It is good news for Angular developer that the web worker and delegate support is an anticipating addition in the new release. Adding web workers and delegates in an application demands a lot of time and efforts when you wish to run all as a background process.
Web workers are avoiding confrontations with elements of a front-end user interface when those are running in the background. However, bundling support in the CLI can increase the efficiency of web workers. Similarly, it can enhance the speed performance of the application by shifting the tasks off the main thread.
6. Opt-in Usage Sharing
Google plans to add opt-in telemetry to the CLI to gather and analyze useful data in the upcoming version. Telemetry can collect information like commands used and build speed. However, opt-in telemetric fundamentally offers more insight into the Angular developers to suggest further improvements.
7. Dependency
The Angular team is going to implement routine dependency updates. It will focus on different tools, including Node, TypeScript, RxJS, and many others to keep them synchronized with the latest updates.
8. Dynamic Import Syntax for Lazy Routes
The dynamic import Syntax for lazy routes enables the Angular Web Development Company to upgrade to Angular version 8.0 easily without interfering their large projects. This feature allows the developers to navigate through the application and find out essential modules in the application.
The lazy-loaded routes use the standard dynamic import syntax, instead of a custom string to find out missing or misspelled modules in the application.
9. Angular Firebase
The Angular developers can now upgrade to Angular CLI by using Angular Firebase. The Angular Firebase helps in deploying the web and mobile applications in rapid ways. The Firebase also offers to deploy commands to deploy the applications.
10. No Auto-correcting for Illegitimate Use of HTML Elements
In earlier versions of Angular, correction of invalid use of <tr> and <col> like HTML elements happened automatically. However, in some instance, developers need those elements to go in the code based on a certain logic. Therefore, the latest Angular 8 has modified the auto-correction module and made it optional for developers.
Conclusively
The Angular framework highly used for creating different types of web and cross-platform mobile applications. The latest Angular 8.0 version is going to ease the life of Angular developers a lot by introducing the latest and advanced features described here.
However, to justify Angular-based web or mobile application development, you need to have an experienced team at your side. It is M-connect Solutions, which has a pool of talented full-stack developers with knacks in Angular application development on any platform and for any computing device. Would you like to converse with the team right now?
What's new in angular 8? In this blog, we will tell you what the latest release will bring to the table when you plan to build a web app with Angular 8