Angular 6 Version Highlights – Check New Functions, Enhanced Functionality

An open-source, front-end platform Angular has set the new milestones in developing customized web apps. The platform enables developers to build web applications with enterprise-grade features and excellent functionality. Business owners can make the most of this framework by opting for AngularJS development services. Recently, Angular has released its new version as Angular 6. The blog talks about what it offers to developers and how it is beneficial for the businesses.

The opening keynote for ng-conf 2018 in April covered all the exciting information about new version of the Angular framework. Finally, one of the most anticipating updates, Angular 6 was released on May 3. Unlike previous Angular releases, the latest release focuses less on the framework and more on making it ready for the future. For example, features like ng add, Angular Elements, CDK, Tree Shakebles, Ivy updates, Library Support, and the like are added to help developers proceed quickly with Angular.

Let’s go through the key features and improvements of Angular 6:

Angular Elements

Interestingly, Angular 6 is the first release that completely supports Angular Elements. One of most expected features, Angular Elements is a brain child of Rob Wormald, and developers can use Angular components in other environments by using this feature.

Since inception, Angular is remained a preferred choice of developers to build Single-Page web apps, but they find it difficult to add a widget on any existing web page. Angular Elements feature gives an answer to this difficulty as it allows them to create an Angular component and publish it as a web component. After publishing as a web component, it can be used in any HTML page with ease.

For example, if there is an app built using JavaScript and jQuery, the app developers can readily use web components built by using Angular Elements in the pages of their application. In short, even if the web project is built on the ecosystem other than Angular, the Angular Elements feature allows developers to add a widget or web components based on Angular.

Ivy- The Next-gen Renderer

Developers can notice that their applications become faster and smaller than ever. All thanks to Ivy- the third and next-gen Angular renderer. This backward-compatible renderer focuses mainly on speed improvements, flexibility, and size reduction for the web apps while ensuring the faster compilation. Though Ivy is expected to come in a full-fledged version in the later update (mostly Angular 7), it is present in Angular 6 with the experimental flag. Soon, its preview version will out for the developers.

CDK (Component Dev Kit)

Angular CDK was released in December 2017. Since then, the Angular Team keeps on making it more competent. Angular 6 has a CDK with over 30 UI components and it enables the developers to build their own library of UI components with the help of Angular Material library. What’s more, the improved CDK of Angular 6 also supports the responsive web design layouts. It assists the AngularJS developers to get rid of either using other libraries like Flex Layout or learning CSS Grid.

Service Worker

Service Workers work amazingly for push notifications and catching. In the latest version of Angular, however, you can deactivate or deregister the Service Worker anytime. Yes, in Angular 6, the Service Worker comes with bug fixes and a safety-worker.js file. The file allows the developers to deactivate the Service Worker as and when they want.

Ng Update and Ng Add

The Ng Update command is useful for updating @angular dependencies. The command will try to catch bugs to update the code. It also updates RxJS and Angular Material code and npm dependencies.

On the other hand, ng add is a way to add new capabilities in the web apps with ease. Developers can readily add Angular Material, Angular Elements, Progressive Web Apps, etc. with the help of schematics. Now, the schematic is a package that contains the tasks for the AngularJS developers like code development or code update.

Tree Shaking

Let’s face it! When a developer imports or exports modules in the JS framework, a few codes are not utilized. Now, tree shaking or dead code elimination is a build optimization step that tries to ensure all unused coded to be get used in the final bundle. The upcoming Ivy renderer is getting ready to take tree shaking to a whole new level.

In a way, tree shaking can make bundles smaller and as a result, you can get a faster startup time for your application.

Changes in Animations

The implementation of animations is updated by the Angular team. It eliminates the necessity of using the web animations polyfill. However, developers need to use polyfill when they use AnimationBuilder. Polyfill removal will save around 47KB of bundle size and improves the performance of animations on Safari platform. This is one of the major changes of the latest Angular version.

Apart from these major improvements and addition, the Angular 6 comes with some minor changes as well.

They are:

• It supports Typescript 2.7.x and makes it easy to code with the conditional type or default declarations
• Improvement in debug error messaging with NgIf in the case of non-template elements
• Native element support
• Addition of Optional generic type for ElementRef
• NgModelChange updated
• Addition of canonical view query
• It supports <ng-template> instead of <template>
• It supports single line, multiline, and jsdoc comments in the code

How to Upgrade to Angular 6.0

Finally, this is for the AngularJS developers who want to upgrade the JavaScript framework to the latest Angular version. We give three easy step here:

• Updating @angular/cli
• Upgrade other framework packages
• Update other dependencies

You can also visit the official Angular website for updates and follow the given guidelines.

Concluding Lines

In brief, the Angular 6 has brought a better code and offers enhanced support to Google’s Material Design approach. Simply put, Angular 6 has all the features and functionality to build a feature-rich business web application. As promised by Google, the Angular platform gets two updates in a year, and we can expect the arrival of Angular 7 in either September or October month this year.

As a well-known AngularJS development company in India, Solution Analysts offers you to hire Angular 6 developers with flexible engagement models. We provide the top-notch AngularJS development services. Contact us to know more about the benefits of the Angular platform and get your new web app based on the latest Angular 6 version.