Angular 8: The Features You Cannot Ignore

Angular 8 has been released, and developers are on the task to explore the new features that would help them determine whether to upgrade the framework or continue with the existing version.

AngularJS was launched in 2012 by Google Corporation, which was one of the most popular versions of Angular, especially developed to combat the challenges of JS code, used to build websites.

In 7 years, the client-side framework has only gotten better with each new version leading to improved performance and reduced application development time. Even though the framework has witnessed tough competition from React, a JS library, making it difficult for the developers to choose between React and Angular, it has managed to maintain its credibility in the ever advancing technology space.

Now that Angular 8 has been launched, both beginner and experienced Angular developers are rejoicing the fact that they now have more powerful features to easily develop web applications.

So let’s go ahead and explore which new Angular 8 features would encourage Angular Developers to upgrade the framework.

Top Angular 8 Features

Some of the new features are quite robust for use and some are still at a very nascent phase of delivery and improvisation, means it will take time to mature and be regularly used by Angular developers.

Differential Loading

This feature holds top slot on the Angular V8 features list because it increases the performance of Angular 8 apps to a great extent.

How?

By creating two bundles during production wherein the first bundle is for browsers that support ES2015+ and the second bundle for ES5 version of JavaScript. These bundles are injected with nomodule attributes.

The new browsers powered by ES6 modules will automatically load the correct bundle, requiring less code and much less polyfills.

Minimum Polyfills—ES2015

Full Polyfills—Legacy

Angular developers can reap the benefits of differential loading by using ng build command with the –prod flag that handles bundling.

SVG as a Template

SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. The file format allows you to scale the resolution of the graphics without affecting the quality.

Before this feature addition, Angular developers were using Inline HTML or external HTML as a template. Now they can use resolution independent .svg graphics as component templates by using directives and bindings to dynamically generate interactive graphics.

Bazel Support

Google has already been using Bazel internally for a long time and now they have introduced it for public use with Angular.

However, it is not yet fully ready and in “opt-in preview” mode. According to Alex Eagle—Angular Tooling Team Lead at Google, “If you tried Bazel in the past there were a lot of sharks…(Now) Sharks have been dealt with, but the water still might be cold.”

The key benefits of Bazel are:

• You don’t need different tools for building backends and frontends
• It allows you to have remote build on a build farm
• You can declare tasks with clear input and output, similar to what Gradle does in Java. It can reduce the build timely extensively.

At ng-conf 2019, Alex Eagle discussed the benefits of Bazel support in Angular, but with the fair warning that first build with Bazel will be slow, as it attempts to create reproducible builds.

Once the first build is developed, it consumes less time, which is extremely beneficial when your application contains several modules and libraries.

Standard Dynamic Import Syntax for Lazy Routes

Dynamic import is a feature that might encourage a software development agency using Angular framework to upgrade to Angular v8.

The new Angular version enables the developers to use the import () operator to navigate through the application and search the required module.

Now, instead of a custom string, lazy-loaded routes can use the standard dynamic import syntax that complains if a module is missing or misspelled.

Angular Firebase

Angular developers who have been using Angular Firebase can now use Angular CLI to deploy their application.

You can use deploy command to deploy the application.

No Auto-correcting for Invalid Usage of HTML Elements

Earlier, Angular was auto-correcting the invalid usage of tr and col HTML elements. But now Angular developers can decide on their own whether to use tr and col HTML elements or to avoid them.

Conclusion

The Angular framework is widely used by software development firms for building mobile and web apps. Any update in the framework is crucial for the Angular developers and so it is essential they have complete knowledge of the latest developments, which is helpful to decide for migration from the previous version to the new Angular 8 version.