Angular 8 New Features That You Shouldn’t Miss

October 11, 2019 5:08 am
by Aruthra

When compared to other frameworks, Angular is probably the only framework that gets regular upgrades. Angular is a web app framework that is developed by Google. It tops as the preferred frameworks for web developers.
The majority of web/software development companies in India are now adopting Angular as their favorite tool for web app/software development.

In this blog, let’s dive into Angular 8 new features ie, the top 6 upgrades that Google has given to its latest version Angular8.

Top 6 Angular 8 New Features

1. Experimental Ivy Rendering

Let’s start with the new features that Angular8 brings, the first probably the most important feature would be the experimental support for ivy.

Ivy is the new Angular rendering engine(external API does not change) which should significantly shrink bundle sizes.

Even though Angular leads as a top framework when compared to other frameworks, apps built with it often tends to be heavy and use loads of memory. Angular 8 uses Ivy To counter this issue.

When compared with the current Angular renderer, Ivy provides the following benefits:

Dynamic loading of the module
Easy readability of code
Faster rebuild time
Better debugging (you can even debug templates )
Efficient template type checking
Smaller bundles
Faster compilations
Backward compatibility.

2. Improved Support for Web Workers

Angular 8 arrives with improved support for web worker bundling. Enhanced bundling support for Web Workers without the need to add new configuration is an added advantage of Angular8.

If you are unsure about what a web worker is, we will describe it below.

Web workers help to delegate CPU intensive work to run separately on a physical CPU(hardware thread). Prior to this feature, web apps were restricted to use only a single thread. Below you can find the code for generating a new web worker with the help of Angular CLI.

ng g webWorker <name>

3. Support for Architect API

Angular 8 allows developers to use Architect API, also known as Builders API. The builders that are used can be seen in the angular.json file. The Architect API uses functions called as builders that can schedule other builders. It can be used for important operations such as build, serve, test, lint, and e2e, which are listed below.

“projects”: {

“app-name”: {

…

“architect”: {

“build”: {

“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:navbar”,

…

“serve”: {

“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:sql-server”,

…

“test”: {

“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:database”,

…

“lint”: {

“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:projectile”,

…

“e2e”: {

“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:timelapse”,

…

}

4. Differential Loading

The new version of Angular comes with Differential loading, which means the apps that are built using Angular CLI will now support ES2015+(the latest version of JavaScript) and has separate bundles for its old ES5 version.

Since new browsers support ES6 modules, it will automatically load the right bundle.

Because of ES2015 support, modern browsers will be able to download app bundles that are having less size, which enables easy loading.

Google has also given a backward compatibility mode to Angualr8, which will make it easy for AngularJS to Angualr8 migration.

Angular8 will create separate bundles for polyfills during the build. Also, it will build additional files by using polyfills.

<body>

<pp-root></pp-root><script type=”text/javascript” src=”runtime.js”></script>

</body>

5. Bazel Support

One of the exciting Angular 8 new features is Bazel support. Bazel is an open-source internal build tool that is developed by Google. With Bazel, developers can do incremental tests and builds.

Due to its support for multiple platforms and languages, developers can easily build full-stack applications.

Bezel is available only as a preview mode in Angular8, we might only get it fully functional in Angular9.

6. LocationUpgradeModule

The LocationUpgradeModule, one of the Angular 8 new features allows unified location service that modifies tasks from the AngularJS $location to the Angular Location Service. Google has also given a backward compatibility mode to Angualr8, which will make it easy for AngularJS to Angualr8 migration.

The angular team will keep on bring upgrades in its new version “Angular9”. Angular v 9 is expected to be released at the end of 2019, we can expect more advanced functionalities on v9 that it’s previous version missed, such as fully functional Bezel and Ivy rendering.