Rushabh PatelAngularJS and Angular are both integral components for front-end developers. But as we start learning the various development aspects of AngularJS, it is imperative we understand how it differs from Angular itself.
Angular has always been the go-to framework, especially for front-end developers building web applications. But to work with Angular, we need to choose one of its versions, among which AngularJS is the most popular one. There are other versions of Angular, of course, but none as much revered as AngularJS.
AngularJS was first created in 2009, and it provided us the opportunity to bind data two-way. Also, it lets us see the JavaScript data changes automatically through the UI. It has directives allowing us to create more reusable and separated codes.
AngularJS development allows programmers to create apps in MVVM or MVC architecture. This was a huge step ahead for frond-end application testing, especially due to its dependency injection mechanism.
AngularJS and Angular: Angular development and its many aspects
Since its emergence, Angular has fascinated many and hence gained a lot of support from developers worldwide. Using Angular, developers were able to create many useful packages in a smaller amount of time. The core elements have been enhanced as more and more aspects were being introduced and appended.
With this, the team behind Angular decided to create a new framework altogether and named it Angular 2 initially. They rename the beta versions Angular. Angular has now reached its 4th version, which is backward compatible with Angular 2.
Angular, at its core, is an open-source framework. Google created it in 2009 to use for developing web apps. Along with React, Angular is one of the most used frameworks by front-end developers for manipulating and presenting data efficiently. As Angular kept updating its versions, its core functionality kept moving to different modules. This has increased its speed and smoothness altogether, making it more efficient to work on.
AngularJS and Angular: AngularJS development and its facets
AngularJS is simply an improvement on the Angular framework with respect to the JavaScript inclusion. It is a JavaScript front-end open-source framework. The developers use it mainly to develop SPAs (single page web applications). This framework is continuously growing and expanding its utilities to provide more efficient ways of web application development.
Besides, it effectively changes the static HTML to dynamic HTML. It flaunts features such as dynamic binding, and injection dependency eliminates the code requirement, which was there earlier. AngularJS is now available in different versions, with the most stable one being 1.7.7.
Although they have their similarities in many aspects, AngularJS and Angular differ from each other in much functionality.
Let us examine a few vital ones.
1. TypeScript and JavaScript
Lets us start from the very basics. While AngularJS is based on JavaScript (of course!), Angular owes its roots to TypeScript. TypeScript is actually a superset of ES6 and has backward compatibility with ES5. Angular hence boasts off a few benefits of ES6 such as lambda operators and iterators.
AngularJS is known to use the terms of Scope and controller. To scope a variable, you have to add multiple variables that can be viewed through View and Controller. AngularJS also has a concept of rootScope, where variables are available throughout the entire application. These concepts of Scope and controller are not available in Angular.
On the other hand, Angular uses a component hierarchy instead as its primary architectural component. These components are simply directives with templates. This approach is quite similar to that of ReactJS, which is also a library used for building user interfaces.
2. Template engines
AngularJS comprises of many directives that allow every AngularJS developer to specify and customize. Angular, on the other hand, also has directives, but people use it a bit differently. Angular uses the ng-model, which allows only two-way binding. But writing it inside “[]” provides access to the one-way binding. The developers use this “()” when they need to event bind and this “[]” for property binding. They have changed some directives, however, to newer names. One way binding is allowed in ng-bind.
3. Architecture
AngularJS supports the design of the model-view-controller. One can use the View to process the information available in the model and generate the output. On the other hand, angular uses components and directives. Components are usually directives with templates.
4. Mobile Support
While all popular browsers mostly available on mobile phones support Angular, they do not support AngularJS. Mobile support is something that AngularJS is yet to support on this front.
5. Dependency injection
Angular uses hierarchical dependency injection, while AngularJS doesn’t make use of any such hierarchical injection.
6. Management structure
When compared to Angular, AngularJS is somewhat less manageable. Angular flaunts better structure in comparison and is easier to create and maintain large-sized applications. In the case of smaller applications, AngularJS trumps Angular.
What has changed altogether?
Angular being the newer and improved version obviously showcases some major improvements over the older versions. Angular development has lots of advantages that fascinate developers worldwide. First, it’s the modularity of Angular where enhanced functionality has been added into the different modules. This has resulted in a faster and lighter core, asynchronous template compilation, and dynamic loading.
Moreover, one could obtain added support for reactive programming. The beta versions have added another great aspect, which is the angular CLI. With such a powerful package, one can create a scaffolding of their Angular projects with relative ease.
Which is better?
Presently the newest version of Angular is proving to be a popular solution. It can turn out to be a better choice on most occasions. But before choosing Angular for your next project, you might want to consider the answers to the following questions.
Now, if you prefer web browsers, then Angular would be the best option. This is mostly because it has a developed library. But for a few browsers, AngularJS could also play the part. The bottom line is both frameworks have their fair share of pros and cons. And it is up to the developer to understand them and judge them on their merits.
- What are the libraries that you want to use?
- Are these libraries compatible with Angular?
- What are the web browsers we want it to support?
Conclusion
Both AngularJS and Angular are great frameworks. With Angular bringing in more improvements on AngularJS, one can say that it will be more popular than the latter in the coming years. But AngularJS finds extensive use in smaller applications and SPAs. Hence it is worthwhile to learn them both and get hands-on experience in building apps using them.
