Angular has reinvented itself from the ground up in the form of Angular 2.0.0 launched today in a special meetup at Google HQ. Now all we have to do is forget Angular 1.

Angular is a framework for building JavaScript apps and dynamic web pages. It is important because it is a good framework and because it has Google behind it - although of course for some this is a negative.

Angular approaches the problem of building a UI from the declarative point of view. Special tags are placed in the HTML and the JavaScript scans the HTML and replaces the tags with data. The binding is two-way so program values are updated when the HTMl changes due to user input and the HTML changes when the values change due to program action.

Angular 1 proved very popular as a way of creating sophisticated JavaScript app. However, there was general consternation when it was announced that Angular 1 was doing mostly the right thing, but in the wrong way, and Angular 2 would be a complete re-write.

As the launch announcement puts it:

"Angular 1 first solved the problem of how to develop for an emerging web. Six years later, the challenges faced by today’s application developers, and the sophistication of the devices that applications must support, have both changed immensely. With this release, and its more capable versions of the Router, Forms, and other core APIs, today you can build amazing apps for any platform. If you prefer your own approach, Angular is also modular and flexible, so you can use your favorite third-party library or write your own."

The new version was planned to deal with mobile as a first priority, only work with modern browsers and, rather than use plain JavaScript, Microsoft's TypeScript would be the language used. 

This approach would either kill Angular 1, Angular 2 or both. As things seem to be turning out Angular 2 is still of great interest and Angular 1 is for legacy only. This means that most Angular programmer have been using the betas and release candidates to get ahead and won't be surprised by anything in the final release.  

The good news is that Angular 2 is here and we can start using it without reservations about production quality or not. The new version also introduces semantic versioning with the usual major.minor.patch numbering. 

So where next?

It is to be hoped that the stability of version 2.0.0 gives everyone time to consolidate and write some good documentation. Planned for the future are:

• Bug fixes and non-breaking features for APIs marked as stable
• More guides and live examples specific to your use cases
• More work on animations
• Angular Material 2
• Moving WebWorkers out of experimental
• More features and more languages for Angular Universal
• Even more speed and payload size improvements

More Information

Angular, version 2: proprioception-reinforcement

Related Articles

Angular Partners With TypeScript 

Angular 2 Fundamentals - The Coolest Course In Existence 

The Weekly Top 10: AngularJS Web Development Resources 

Angular 2: Built on TypeScript

Angular 2.0 

ngconf2015 demo on GitHub

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info