Angular is among the top open source front-end platforms around. As it is managed and facilitated by Google, it already has the credibility and prominence attached to it.
It is one of the fastest growing and evolving front-end application development solutions when it comes to addressing compliance factors across different framework orientations on mobile and desktop. This is because it continuously grows and expands to allow users with better ways to commit to front-end development techniques and approaches that are drawn on latest design properties. With the latest feature updates and operative resources coming in with each release, Angular continues to build better solutions with authentic declarative templates and data-binding facility.
And of course, this has been made possible because of the regular version updates it comes up with. Attempting to interpret that, the changes and upgrades Angular has gone through to offer better value to its users can be best depicted by comparing different versions and updates it has come up with in the form of AngularJS, Angular 2, Angular 4 and Angular 5.
Difference between AngularJS and Angular 2
The first version of Angular, AngularJS was released in 2010 and was also referred to as Angular 1 by some people. Angular 2 was released in September 14, 2016 and it was not just an upgrade but a completely transformed version of Angular which was written from scratch. Therefore, the way you write on AngularJS and Angular 2 are two completely different things.
- Also, if you compare AngularJS and Angular 2 on the basis of communication between different components, you would find AngularJS to be fast and smooth in facilitating and processing messages between different components. And this makes it highly easy to interface and work with by developers.
- AngularJS is all based on controllers in which the View communicates using $scope. Quite opposite to that Angular 2 follows an extensively component-based approach and the Controllers no longer exist here. Components in Angular 2 are basically the sorted building blocks of application which make it really easy for developers to reuse codes in future.
- Angular 2 takes much lesser time for unit testing. Again, this becomes possible with the help of components that promote consistency and smoothness of use. This makes it easy to track and test it for the use of resources, flow of components and execution of events.
- If you look at both of these from the performance point-of-view, Angular 2 is about 5x faster than AngularJS in processing tasks.
- Another thing that marks a big different between the two is that AngularJS does not support mobile devices but Angular 2 does.
- Also, Angular 2 offers you to put up with more language choices like TypeScript, Dart, JavaScript, PureScript and Elm etc. and this is among the major differences that part apart these two quite notably.
Difference between Angular 2 and Angular 4
Angular 2 was released in September 14, 2016 and Angular 4 in March 2017. These two are different to each other majorly in terms of performance value as Angular 4 is essentially an enhanced version of Angular 2 as it comes equipped with better resources and finer detailing for better user-interaction, least commotions, faster reflexes and smoother results.
- Angular 2 is completely written from scratch and is not an extended version of AngularJS. However, Angular 4 is not a completely rewritten version of Angular 2 and is basically a result of a few tweaks and changes done in core libraries. So, if you have worked on Angular 2, you can work on Angular 4 quite easily.
- The approaches and concepts of Angular 2 and Angular 4 are quite similar. Which makes it quite easy to understand and work on Angular 4 if you have worked on Angular 2 already.
- A major difference in Angular 2 and Angular 4 is the reduced size of the AoT (Ahead-of-time) compiler generated code, which makes it highly swift and smooth to work on Angular 4 compared to Angular 2.
- Angular 2 used to only support the TypeScript 1.8 version. However, Angular 4 supports TypeScript 2.1 and TypeScript 2.2, which makes you to avail new features that are quite advanced than that of Angular 2.
- You need to change the package references (like for animation packages) to reduce the bundle size when you are moving from Angular 2 to Angular 4.
- In Angular 4 you can use else block along with *ngif. So, if you write a code in Angular 2 in this form:
1. <div *ngIf=”yourCondition”>
2. <h2>Condition true!</h2>
3. </div>
4. <div *ngIf=”!yourCondition”>
5. <h2>Condition false!</h2>
6. </div>
You can write it in Angular 4 like this:
1. <div *ngIf=”yourCondition; else myFalsyTemplate”>
2. <h2>Condition true!</h2>
3. </div>
4. <ng-template #myFalsyTemplate>
5. <h2>Condition false!</h2>
6. </ng-template>
What’s new in Angular 5
Released on 1st November 2017, Angular 5 comes with an enhanced modular architecture covering the approaches, practices and applications across all phases, including UI designing to testing, to help you both design and develop application correspondingly.
- Angular 5 is highly known for eliminating useless code from your application with the help of Build Optimizer. This allows you to have a more compressed, arranged and neater code structure to put up with.
- It comes equipped with Angular Universal State Transfer API and DOM Support which allows you to share the state of application between client side and server side with great ease.
- Angular 5 comes with improved compiler support which lets you get the incremental compilation done with great authority and control and get applications compiled fast and easy.
- Unlike earlier versions of Angular, it preserves whitespace and helps you keep the code well-arranged and aligned keeping it free from unnecessary disjoints and needless gaps.
- It offers great possibility and scope to standardize and internationalize the coding patterns across different browsers. This is done with the help of a well-defined structure and format for numbers, dates, currencies and for other different processing attributes and functional elements without depending on i18n polyfills.
- Angular 5 comes with increased decorator support using lambda expressions and not the nomenclatures or naming functions. Here’s an example:
Before:
1. Component({
2. provider: [{
3. provide: ‘my-service’,
4. useValue: testMethod()
5. }]
6. })
7. export class CustomClass {}
Now in Angular 5:
1. Component({
2. provider: [{
3. provide: ”
4. my – service ‘, useFactory: () => null}]
5. })
6. export class CustomClass {}
Conclusion
Comparing these we find that all of these versions of Angular are different in some or the other way and come up with better offerings and value compared to their precursor-versions. And hence, you can find a lot of different in the 2010-launched AngularJS and the 2017-released Angular 5 and can expect something new and improved coming in as we move ahead in the time graph.