Angular has undergone an exciting evolution from its beginnings to the present day. It is quite a new technology – its initial release took place in the second half of 2016. It is used as the frontend of the MEAN stack; it constantly gets new updates and has the support of the giant Google. Initial versions of Angular cause a bit of confusion, and so is the naming of the framework. So take a look at the path Angular has traveled, what versions are currently released, and what interesting each of them introduced.
What is Angular?
Angular is an open framework for creating Single Page Applications. Google designed Angular as a ground-up rewrite of AngularJS. While it was originally intended to be version 2 of this popular framework, design decisions led Google to release it as a standalone technology. It was due to some issues, such as the lack of backward compatibility and a simple upgrade path for AngularJS applications to Angular 2. Angular was written in TypeScript and is still supported and developed by Google. Being rewritten from scratch AngularJS, Angular has had a lot of changes and improvements. Its features are modularity, different expression syntax than in the original (focus on “[]” for property binding and “()” for event binding), and most of all, the use of TypeScript. Angular also offers a rich collection of third-party integrations to enhance web applications further and is considered an excellent choice for developing enterprise-scale applications.
Is Angular outdated?
Considering its popularity among web frameworks, Angular is still high – it ranks 4th according to Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey 2021. Also, as you can see in the list of Angular versions below, there are always new framework improvements, and Google continues to support the framework. However, you can see that technologies such as React.js or Vue.js often win over Angular due to their simplicity. However, Angular is considered to be more versatile and has quite a lot of users. Google plans to release major updates every six months, with many enhancements and improvements that should keep Angular on par with other modern frameworks. Moreover, it is appreciated for its component-based architecture, which facilitates the development and testing of software. It is also characterized by reasonably high code reusability. Considering the above, we can say that Angular is still holding up well and is not yet outdated, but it has pretty tough competition.
What are the versions of Angular?
Angular version history includes both major releases and minor improvements released like the next version of Angular.
Angular JS
Called Angular 1 by some, AngularJS is a front-end open source web application framework based on JavaScript. It was created to facilitate application development and testing, providing a framework for the model-view-controller (MVC) and Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) architectures on the client-side.
Angular 2
Angular 2 is a complete rewrite of AngularJS and is considered a different framework from its predecessor. It uses a component-based approach, has more advanced features, and has a better code structure.
Angular 4
At the end of 2016, skipping version 3, Angular 4 was released. It was done to avoid confusion due to the mismatch of the router package version, already distributed as v3.3.0. Angular 4, of course, added a new package of features, including a more efficient, more accessible library to create HTTP requests, HttpClient. The final version was released in March 2017.
Angular 5
This version of Angular was released on November 1, 2017. The key improvements introduced by Angular 5 include support for progressive web applications and the build optimiser.
Angular 6
Angular 6 focused heavily on add-ons and tools for the framework on it itself. It emphasised updating, Angular elements, Angular Material + CDK components, CLI workspaces, library support, etc.
Angular 7
Angular 7 from October 2018 introduced updates for application performance, Angular Material & CDK, virtual scrolling, improved selection accessibility, ensuring better mobile application development with Angular CLI prompts and more.
Angular 8
Released in May 2019, Angular 8 was a major release that included new vital features like dynamic imports for lazy routes, network robots, TypeScript 3.4 and Angular Ivy support as options preview, and differential loading for all application code.
Angular 9
Angular 9 was released in February 2020. By default, version 9 brings all applications to use the Ivy compiler and runtime. Angular has been updated to work with TypeScript 3.6 and 3.7. It is from Ivy compiler that is Angular best known.
Angular 10
Soon after version 9, Angular 10 was released. It introduced new features like a new default browser configuration, CommonJS import warnings, and a new date range selector (Material UI library).
Angular 11
Angular 11 was released on November 11, 2020, with updates on Operation Byelog, improved reporting and logging, faster builds, automatic inlining of fonts, etc.
Angular 12
The version was released on May 12, 2021. Angular 12 is preparing to move away from the View Engine, which is planned to be removed from the next major release, and ultimately transitioned to Ivy. Some stylish improvements and documentation changes have also been made to help learn Angular.
Which version of Angular is best?
There will surely be a lot of people who will say that the latest version is the best. Indeed, it has the most improvements, new functions, improved documentation, or other features useful in the software development and testing process. Each version was modern for its time of release. In fact, it is hard to say which version is the best without specifying a specific use case for Angular. In many cases, it may turn out that one of the older versions will be sufficient. So a lot depends on the needs of the project or developer.
Which is the latest Angular version?
The latest version of Angular (as of February 2022) is Angular 13. This version was released on November 04, 2021.
Is Angular 2 and Angular 8 are same?
Angular 2 and Angular 8 are different versions of the same framework, but they are not precisely the same. As Angular 2 was a rewrite of the original AngularJS and completely redefined, it became a separate framework. Angular 2, when it was ported to typeScript, then got newer versions and newer updates, without JS in the name. Angular 2 is an older version, and Angular 8 is a newer one that includes many new features.
Summary
There are many features of Angular that make it an excellent choice for web apps development. The Angular team releases new versions constantly and announces more and more performance improvements, long-term support, backward compatibility, critical fixes and more. In short, Angular will continue to evolve and enhance. Adding to it its general advantages such as high quality of applications created in it, speed of development, the ability to develop cross-platform software, detailed documentation, praised Angular CLI, features such as two-way data binding or differential loading, Angular seems to be a sensible choice for projects web.
February 25, 2022
