Angular 2 is one of the most anticipated and dramatic version upgrades I have seen for any software. Angular 1 was a boon to web/mobile web/hybrid app developers, where managing a lot of things was made easy. Not only did Angular 1 help restructure client-side app development, but it also provided a platform to build applications; not websites, but applications. Though the first release suffered performance issues when dealing with large datasets, the Angular team bounced back quite well with the later releases of Angular 1, that is, Angular 1.4.x and above, and fixed these performance issues by releasing a more stable version in the form of Angular (2).
Some of the new changes that have accompanied with Angular (2) are:
- Speed and performance improvements.
- Component based (not the typical MV*).
- Angular CLI.
- Simple and expressive syntax.
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
- Cross-platform app development, which includes desktops, mobile, and web.
- Cordova-based Hybrid app development.
- Angular Universal provider for the server side for fast initial views.
- Upgrades to better animation, internationalization, and accessibility.
- Angular can be written on ES5, ES6, TypeScript, and Dart are based on the user's comfort with the JavaScript flavor.
With these new updates, developing apps has never been easier, be it on the desktop, mobile, or Mobile Hybrid environments.
Note: The latest version of Angular is going to be called just Angular, not Angular 2, or AngularJS 4, or NG4. So throughout this book, I will refer to Angular version 2 as Angular.
The current latest version of Angular is 4. Do checkout Chapter 11, Ionic 3, to know a bit more about Angular 4 and how it improves Ionic.
Note: If you are new to Angular, you can refer to these books:
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/learning-angular-2
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/mastering-angular-2-components
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/mastering-angular-2
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/angular-2-example
Or these videos:
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/angular-2-projects-video
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/web-development-angular-2-and-bootstrap-video
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/angular-2-web-development-TypeScript-video
