Angular (also referred to as "Angular 2+") is a

TypeScript TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. It is designed for the development of large app ...

-based, free and open-source

web application framework A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build an ...

led by the Angular Team at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and by a community of individuals and corporations. Angular is a complete rewrite from the same team that built AngularJS.

Differences between Angular and AngularJS

Architecture of an Angular 2 application

Google designed Angular as a ground-up rewrite of AngularJS. * Angular does not have a concept of "scope" or controllers; instead, it uses a hierarchy of components as its primary architectural characteristic. * Angular has a different expression syntax, focusing on " for

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

binding, and "( )" for event binding * Modularity – much core functionality has moved to modules * Angular recommends the use of Microsoft's

language, which introduces the following features: **

Static typing In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer progra ...

, including Generics ** Type annotations * Dynamic loading * Asynchronous template compilations * Iterative callbacks provided by RxJS. * Support to run Angular applications on servers.

History

Naming

The rewrite of AngularJS was called "Angular 2", but this led to confusion among developers. To clarify, the Team announced that separate names should be used for each framework with " AngularJS" referring to the 1.X versions and "Angular" without the "JS" referring to versions 2 and up.

Version 2

Angular 2.0 was announced at the ng-Europe conference 22–23. October 2014. The drastic changes in the 2.0 version created considerable controversy among developers. On April 30, 2015, the Angular developers announced that Angular 2 moved from Alpha to Developer Preview. Angular 2 moved to Beta in December 2015, and the first release candidate was published in May 2016. The final version was released on September 14, 2016.

Version 4

On 13 December 2016 Angular 4 was announced, skipping 3 to avoid a confusion due to the misalignment of the router package's version which was already distributed as v3.3.0. The final version was released on March 23, 2017. Angular 4 is

backward compatible Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially in ...

with Angular 2. Angular version 4.3 is a minor release, meaning that it contains no breaking changes and that it is a drop-in replacement for 4.x.x. Features in version 4.3 * Introducing HttpClient, a smaller, easier to use, and more powerful library for making HTTP Requests. * New router life cycle events for Guards and Resolvers. Four new events: GuardsCheckStart, GuardsCheckEnd, ResolveStart, ResolveEnd join the existing set of life cycle event such as NavigationStart. * Conditionally disable animations.

Version 5

Angular 5 was released on November 1, 2017. Key improvements in Angular 5 include support for progressive web apps, a build optimizer and improvements related to Material Design.

Version 6

Angular 6 was released on May 4, 2018. This is a major release focused less on the underlying framework and more on the toolchain and on making it easier to move quickly with Angular in the future, like: ng update, ng add, Angular Elements, Angular Material + CDK Components, Angular Material Starter Components, CLI Workspaces, Library Support, Tree Shakable Providers, Animations Performance Improvements, and RxJS v6.

Version 7

Angular 7 was released on October 18, 2018. Updates regarding Application Performance, Angular Material & CDK, Virtual Scrolling, Improved Accessibility of Selects, now supports Content Projection using web standard for custom elements, and dependency updates regarding Typescript 3.1, RxJS 6.3, Node 10 (still supporting Node 8).

Version 8

Angular 8 was released on May 28, 2019. Featuring Differential loading for all application code, Dynamic imports for lazy routes, Web workers, TypeScript 3.4 support, and Angular Ivy as an opt-in preview. Angular Ivy opt-in preview includes: * Generated code that is easier to read and debug at runtime * Faster re-build time * Improved payload size * Improved template type checking * Backwards compatibility

Version 9

Angular 9 was released on February 6, 2020. Version 9 moves all applications to use the Ivy compiler and runtime by default. Angular has been updated to work with TypeScript 3.6 and 3.7. In addition to hundreds of bug fixes, the Ivy compiler and runtime offers numerous advantages: * Smaller bundle sizes * Faster testing * Better debugging * Improved CSS class and style binding * Improved type checking * Improved build errors * Improved build times, enabling AOT on by default * Improved

Internationalization In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

Version 10

Angular 10 was released on June 24, 2020. * New Date Range Picker (Material UI library) * Warnings about

CommonJS CommonJS is a project with the goal to establish conventions on the module ecosystem for JavaScript outside of the web browser. The primary reason for its creation was a major lack of commonly accepted forms of JavaScript module units which could ...

imports * Optional Stricter Settings * Keeping Up to Date with the Ecosystem * New Default Browser Configuration * Deprecations and Removals

Version 11

Angular 11 was released on November 11, 2020.

Version 12

Angular 12 was released on May 12, 2021. * Deprecated support for IE11

Version 13

Angular 13 was released on November 04, 2021

Version 14

Angular 14 was released on June 02, 2022. Some new features include typed forms, standalone components, and new primitives in the Angular CDK (component dev kit). Standalone components work across Angular, and they now fully work in HttpClient, Angular Elements, router and more.

Version 15

Angular 15 was released on November 16, 2022. Standalone APIs graduated from developer preview and are now part of the stable API surface.

Future releases

Since v9, the Angular team has moved all new applications to use the Ivy compiler and runtime. They will be working on Ivy to improve output bundle sizes and development speeds. Each version is expected to be backward-compatible with the prior release. The Angular development team has pledged to do twice-a-year upgrades.

Support policy and schedule

All the major releases are supported for 18 months. This consists of 6 months of active support, during which regularly-scheduled updates and patches are released. It is then followed by 12 months of long-term support (LTS), during which only critical fixes and security patches are released. Angular versions v2 to v11 are no longer under support.

Libraries

Angular Material

Angular Material is a UI component library that implements Material Design in Angular.

References

External links

Official website

Archived website (Angular 2)
{{Google FOSS Google software Software using the MIT license Ajax (programming) JavaScript libraries 2016 software JavaScript web frameworks