Benefits Of AngularJS And Its Transformation Journey To Angular

It is a well-established fact that JavaScript is the best suited frontend language for all the modern websites. So, undoubtedly, a JavaScript based framework is a must for your web development project.

There are many JavaScript frontend frameworks and the most popular ones are:

· Ember

· ReactJS

· Vue.JS

· Backbone.JS

· AngularJS

Out of all the 5, the best one, as stated by most of the web developers around the globe is AngulaJS. Since 2010, when the framework was first released, the demand for AngularJS development services has been on a rise. There are numerous reasons for AngularJS to be the first choice for many web developers.

Why is AngularJS so much in demand?

• MVC all the way
  The MVC (Model View Controller) model is a must to enable developers to develop rich and dynamic web applications. It is a model which divides logic, process and user interface in 3 separate modules, thereby eliminating complexity in the code and making the developed app fault free. This model is supported by AngularJS. This makes this framework the best fitted one for designing applications with fast loading and responsive pages.

• Owned by Google
  AngularJS is an open source framework owned by one of the largest software companies - Google. With Google watching over the development of this framework and even taking up the responsibility of rolling out upgrades when needed. With a dedicated team of developers from Google constantly working on bettering it, the framework becomes extremely reliable. A framework which is openly available for everyone to use and yet is so reliable, is a rare combination to have.

• Time-saving
  Web development needs a lot of time as one needs to take care of alpha testing simultaneously. The complete process is time consuming as one cannot simultaneously develop more than one parts of the software. But, in case of AngularJS, as the framework supports the MVC model, developers can work on different parts of the development process simultaneously. The app can be split into several MVC components and the testing and development process quickly. This speeds up the process and developers can complete app development efficiently within a short time span.

• Templates that are ready to use
  AngularJS is a framework that offers developers to work with templates that have been pre-designed with all the basic required HTML attributes and thereby, saves a lot of coding time required for building up basic attributes. One can straight away choose a suitable template and modify it according to one’s requirements. Also, for someone who is new to the programming world, it is easy to master this framework due to these templates.

• Two-way data binding
  The data binding in AngularJS is two way - this means that any changes in user interface will straight away influence application objects and the same thing is valid for other way round. This way, every time the framework encounters any kind of browser events, module changes or user actions on the page, it will update the necessary patterns in the backend. This way, developers can create various text properties on a model that requires binding directly to the app UI.

• Best choice for SPA
  Taking into consideration the rising demand of fully responsive single page web applications, AngulaJS has been preferred more and more by developers as this framework has several pre-designed modules for assisting the creation of single page web application and all of these have impressive UI and are highly responsive as well.

The confusion between AngularJS and Angular

Recently, there have been many developers and business owners who have been confused between the two terms Angular and AngularJS. General perception is that both the terms can be used interchangeably.

But that is not true. Both the terms are names of two different versions of the same framework developed by Google.

Let me elaborate a bit on this.

AngularJS was launched by Google in 2010 and it gained quite the popularity because of its above-mentioned benefits and a lot many other features. But, obviously, AngularJS was not flawless. It was the best framework for single page web applications but, it was not very suitable for mobile apps. Although, there are several libraries that can enable AngularJS to be used for mobile apps, the result is not satisfactory enough.

So,

Google developers decided to launch a newer version of the framework and in doing so, they completely rewrote the application. The new version Angular 2.

Angular 2 had all the benefits of AngularJS and many additional ones as well.

This version was designed keeping in mind the mobile architecture and thus came a framework that helped developers create mobile apps as easily as AngularJS assisted the development of single page web apps.

Though the names are similar, there were major changes in the structure of Angular 2 when compared to AngularJS.

1. The file type: Applications based on AngularJS are built with JavaScript while those on Angular are built with TypeScript.

2. Architecture: AngularJS has MVC structure while Angular 2 has the Components structure.

3. Usage: AngularJS is mostly helpful in developing two-way binded web applications while Angular 2 was designed keeping the mobile architecture in mind to ease the process of developing mobile apps with impressive UIs.

All the changes were very well received by developers and that led to 3 more upgrades of Angular 2 to be released within a short span of just 2 years.

→ Angular 2 in May, 2016.

→ Angular 4 in Dec, 2016.

→ Angular 5 in Nov, 2017.

→ Angular 6 was just released last month on 4th May, 2018.

Summing up