Globally, organizations are striving hard to showcase a strong online presence. That is where the need for effective software solutions and web development is a must. To fulfil these requirements, here comes Angular – a popular web development framework that has been liked by one and all. Thanks to its salient features and key advantages, Angular has been highly recommended for frontend development amidst all kinds of projects.

Let us run through an overview of Angular and the top features and reasons why it is a preferred choice today.

What is Angular?

Angular (commonly referred to as “Angular 2+” or “Angular CLI”) is a TypeScript-based free and open-source web application framework led by the Angular Team at Google and by a community of individuals and corporations. Angular is a complete rewrite from the same team that built AngularJS. – Wikipedia

Developed by Google, Angular was released in 2016 as Angular 2 and onwards. Angular is a term utilized for all Angular versions that got released after AngularJS, right from Angular 2 to the latest. The latest release Angular 14 was released in June 2022. Angular is built on TypeScript and is a component-based framework for creating scalable web apps. It has a collection of libraries that encompass different features, forms management, routing, etc.

Angular is capable of handling small-end projects to enterprise-level projects. It comprises of a huge community of developers all around the world, contributors, and library authors. Its component-driven architecture empowers developers with greater reusability and quick development. It makes use of TypeScript language for reducing unnecessary code and offering fast execution. It also works well in creating interactive single-page applications. There is no need to depend on third-party libraries to create dynamic apps with Angular.

Organizations Using Angular

Forbes, Google, General Motors, Sony, YouTube TV, HBO, Nike, Upwork, Deutsche Bank, Samsung, PayPal, Microsoft Office, Delta Airlines, Mixer, Gmail, Santander, Netflix, Udacity, and many more.

Key Features of Angular That Are a Developer’s Delight

  • TypeScript, a typed superset of JavaScript is what Angular works on, preferably and Angular offers great performance and an easy-to-understand codebase because of TypeScript’s syntactic structure, and sophisticated text editors of IDEs.
  • With Dependency Injection, developers can now describe apps in a declarative manner. In case of a component is not suitable, it can be replaced with dependency injection.
  • Document Object Model (DOM) is used by Angular through which there is automatic updating of the entire tree structure of nodes (HTML tags) every time any update is made to the page
  • Two-way data binding that offers a smooth synchronization between the model and view, with a real-time update in both. It employs dynamic HTML and requires no complicated programming.
  • The Jasmine testing framework empowers Angular users to work on a variety of test cases for effective testing. It uses Karma – the task executor for these tests.
  • Angular Styleguide is an apt guiding approach to create apps with ease, especially for novices. This makes newcomers feel at ease and less confused. Also, its code generation and automation feature are best for creating new services and components.
  • Angular offers structured and stable releases with great performance enhancements in its tools, libraries, and frameworks. This helps the community in creating a robust and maintainable framework.
  • Its familiarity with the core concepts of AngularJS keeps it approachable for AngularJS users since they can easily migrate to Angular rather than other libraries or frameworks
  • The new modular system adapted by Angular for its project architecture and maintenance has worked in its favor. It now uses the ES2015 module system with modernized packaging tools like SystemJS or WebPack. The applications are now easily manageable with lesser workarounds and easy writing and plugging of code.

Top Reasons Why Angular is a Preferred Choice for Web Development

If you have ever wondered why Angular is often chosen as the apt development tool by organizations – big and small alike, here are the key reasons supporting the choice:

  • Great Community Support

Since it is powered by Google and written based on JavaScript, there is a huge community following that offers great support and guidance. The help offered is in terms of solving a variety of issues that developers face and referring to important material from different sources, conferences, releases, etc. Hence, getting help is very easy with Angular and hence is loved by developers, especially novices.

  • Seamless Compatibility with Apps, Devices, and Infrastructure

Angular offers easy and smooth integration with third-party applications. Also, it is highly compatible with most kinds of devices like laptops, mobiles, desktops, tablets, etc. in developing different kinds of applications like progressive web apps, single-page apps, etc. Organizations find it easy to integrate the Angular-based apps with other infrastructure and hence find it a preferred option for web and mobile app development.

  • Uniformity in Coding

Since Angular supports MVC architecture, writing and managing robust code is easy for developers. The Angular framework can handle a strong infrastructure for coding, guaranteeing a reliable and strong coding structure. Code reusability also helps them save time and effort simplifying the entire coding process. Since Angular is a responsive framework, its optimized Angular CLI tools help in using repeatable code blocks and different buckets.

  • High Performance and Deployment Speed

Due to its salient features like versatility, two-way data binding, and many others, Angular offers great speed and performance. Since it is a flexible and robust framework, it offers developers the kind of deployment speed they need, depending upon the type of project and application being developed.

  • Security of Data

Angular offers the best security mechanisms that protect the data and application from any type of cybersecurity threats, malware, malicious attacks, etc. In today’s modern world, having proper security measures is most vital to protect all types of data.

  • Enhanced Productivity

Since the coding style is simple, code consistency is higher and the learning curve is less, it becomes easy for developers to give out programs faster and in an effective manner. Since Angular supports code organization into different modules, functionalities are split into reusable chunks of code. This helps in increasing productivity levels for developers.

  • Ivy Renderer by Default

The Angular engine supports Ivy renderer with which the code debugging is faster and more effective. There is a higher user-friendly experience with faster loading of components. Hence the entire framework is more approachable and with enriched features.

  • Declarative UI

Angular support declarative UI by utilizing HTML for its user interface. HTML is a declarative language with different directive controls like ng-repeat, ng-app, etc. There is lesser time needed in finalizing the controls to be loaded first. Angular manages that through this functionality.

Angular Limitations

There are certain drawbacks that Angular shows, though there can be managed with effective steps:

  • It has a longer learning curve since it involves knowledge of decorators, modules, directives, services, components etc.
  • Wordy and complicated as compared to other tools
  • There are restricted SEO choices and less disposal to crawlers
  • Tough job to port legacy code to Angular style architecture

On a Parting Note

Businesses need effective apps to make them fulfill their goals and maximize their revenue. Angular has turned up to be an ideal choice for offering the best of performance, speed, productivity, and an enriched user experience. The above-mentioned reasons are strong enough to support the fact why Angular has been a preferred choice amongst software developers and how it is a superset of the very popular AngularJS.

Being powered by the tech giant Google, Angular has a bright way to go, with newer releases promising newer features. There is a lot we will witness in the coming days, for all Angular fanatics, wait and watch!