What’s new in Angular 8 and how will it benefit web development

The Angular developer community is excited about the recently released Angular 8. The Angular 8 is the latest version of the highly popular Angular web development framework. When Angular was released by Google, it quickly made its mark in the popularity charts due to the framework’s ability to utilize the innate capability of HTML in helping developers build top-notch single page web apps. The two-way data binding property of Angular has ensured that complex front-end web applications can be created quickly and easily. Re-usable HTML and CSS components further compounded the popularity of Angular and the framework quickly became the go-to choice amongst the developer community. The Angular web framework currently powers more than 400,000 websites on the internet.

Ease of use, mobile compatible design, scalability, and ease of testing has made Angular one of the most preferred web development technologies. Due to all these features, Angular already has a large number of followers, and with the addition of new features in Angular 8, the numbers are sure to surge.

Angular 8 has been released which has a load of features making this already enviable framework sleeker. In this post we shall throw some light on the new features incorporated in the Angular framework and how will they benefit in making better websites.

Default Differential Loading

Angular 8 has a new feature which automatically detects which browser the user is on, and caters the bundle accordingly. This means that when you open the application, your browser will automatically load the correct bundle according to your application. This reduces the bundle size significantly(about 7-20%) improving the loading speed and TTI(time to interactive) of the web app. Moreover, the developer is freed from the hassle of building a separate code configuration into the page.

Default differential loading reduces the bundle size by 7-20% improving loading times.

Support for Bazel

Bazel is a tool which was used internally by Google has now been made open-source with the release of Angular 8. Developers can build their CLI application with Bazel. It also helps developers by making the development process faster. and allows them to build frontends and backends with the same tool, One of the new features of Angular 8 is the possibility to build your CLI application with Bazel. The Angular framework itself is built with it. The tool will allow for the incremental building of the codebase allowing the developers to build only what has changed rather than changing the entire app. This feature alone provides impressive gains in terms of application build time. Developers have the possibility of having remote builds with cache on a build farm with Bazel the first build will be very slow, but the subsequent builds will be much faster. Although Bazel is an experimental feature, the fact that Angular 8 is made on it is reason enough for developers to start experimenting with the feature.

Thus Bazel will substantially speed up the development process in Angular 8.

Enter the “Ivy” league

Angular 8 comes with Ivy support. Ivy is Angular’s new internal rendering engine which has focused on rewriting the compiler and run-time code to achieve improved build times, decreased build sizes which are compatible with tree-shaking and new features like lazy loading of components. Thus the Ivy engine makes Angular applications smaller and faster providing great impetus to Angular Development. The Ivy feature is also in an experimental mode for now, but the exciting possibilities of the feature make it a must-have feature in Angular 8.
Ivy engine helps in reducing build times and in decreasing bundle sizes.

Web workers

Using a simple command ng generate webWorker my-worker developers can offload CPU-intensive tasks to a background thread. As the web workers work independently from the main thread, by using web workers, the speed of the application can be improved. Web workers help in keeping the response time of web app optimum, thus preventing the web app from becoming unresponsive. Bundling support is provided to increase the efficiency of web workers.

Web workers help in reducing the load on the main thread thereby making the site more responsive.

Lazy Loading

Suppose there is an e-commerce website when a user wants to visit the fashion apparel section there is no need to load the automobile section, this will just put unnecessary load on the server and increase the loading time, which will put the user off. To solve this issue Angular 8 comes with lazy loading feature. Lazy loading is a feature which lets the web application load faster, by virtue of its innate ability to let the application load different pieces of code on demand.

Lazy loading helps in optimizing the site load time.

Backward compatibility

Angular 8 comes with backward compatibility; it means that this latest version of Angular will work with older versions making the transition from new to old versions smooth. This is possible due to the fact that Angular 8 allows lazy loading on parts of Angular js apps.

Backward compatibility ensures that new web apps are compatible with older versions, thus resolving migration issues.

Also Read: Using AngularJS for your Web Application Development Solution: Here’s everything you need to know

Opt-in usage sharing

Opt-in usage sharing will allow developers to share telemetry about their Angular CLI usage with the Angular team. The Angular team can collect invaluable data like the commands used while coding and speed of build in-case the opt-in usage sharing is activated by the developers. This will help the Angular team in plugging the loop-holes and come out with an improved version of Angular in the future.

Opt-in usage sharing helps in improving the Angular framework by providing usage analytics to the Angular team.

Builders API

A new Builders API is included in the Angular 8 version. This new builders API allows the developers to do building, testing and deployment processes which were previously done with schematics. In the Angular 8 building customized builders is possible which can help in simplifying the development process.
Builders API help in making the development process easy.

Angular is already being used in many critical Google projects like Google Ads and Google Trends. Other reputed companies like BMW USA and Microsoft Xbox are also using Angular for their web development needs.

The release of Angular 8 has tilted the web app development game in Angular’s favor. With the inculcation of features like Bazel, Ivy, differential loading, web workers and lazy loading the web app development with Angular 8 is going to be faster, smoother, less CPU intensive along with decreasing the application loading time through the help of Angular Developers.

With the new leaner and meaner Angular 8, the popularity of this web development framework is bound to go only one way, North!

Purvi

Technology, the heart of the new age business, is her interest. Her association with technology and business is well balanced to offer solutions that will lead organizations towards success. She likes to explore technical feasibilities that will functionalize business requirements productively. She likes to visit tech forums, to answer developer queries, to find new ways and write about technologies that will mobilize businesses.