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The eight version of the JavaScript framework Angular has once again quite a lot to offer. The new features of the framework are New builder API, Differential Loading, Web-Workers support and more.
But above all, Angular 8 arrives with the much-anticipated Ivy compiler as an opt-in feature.
Considering the fact that Angular 7 is going to be supported until April of 2020, you may decide that it is not worth upgrading if Angular 7 already fulfills all of your needs. If you are eager to have a sneak peek at most interesting changes, then you are on the right place.
Ivy isn’t ready yet – opt-in preview
The most anticipated feature of Angular 8 is Ivy render engine, which is substantially different from anything as it uses incremental DOM. It changes how the framework internally works, without changing our Angular applications. The Ivy project is basically rewriting the Angular compiler and runtime code in order to reach: better build times, better build sizes and new potential features like lazy loading of component instead of modules.
Bazel support – opt-in preview
One of the new features of Angular 8 is the possibility to build your CLI application with Bazel. The Angular framework itself is build with Bazel.
It is available as opt-in, it is expected to be included in @angular/cli in v9.
Builders API
The new version enables us to use Builders API, also known as Architect API. Angular uses builders for main operations: serve, build, test, lint and e2e.
“Builders are funtions that implement the logic and behavior for a task that can replace a command,” the team wrote in a blog post.
Angular Firebase
The latest version of Angular comes with an added support for firebase and now we can deploy our application using the Angular CLI.
ng run [PROJECT NAME]:deploy
Web Worker Support
Web workers are great for speeding things up in your application when you start working on CPU-intensive tasks. They allow you offload work to a background thread, which can be an image or video manipulation, for instance. The Angular team uses web workers on angular.io for in-app search indexing. With the new version, you can generate new web workers from your Angular CLI.
Support SVG template
Now you can use SVG file as a template. Up until now, we only had the option to use inline HTML or external HTML as a template.
Differential loading
Your Angular 8 apps will now be automatically more performant, thanks to differential loading. With differential loading, two bundles are created when building for production – one for modern browsers and another one for older browsers that only support the ES5 version of JavaScript.
Updating to version 8
Updating your Angular application to the latest version can be done following the below steps:
1. Angular 8 user TypeScript 3.4, so install TypeScript 3.4
2. You need to use Node 12 or later,
3. Now execute the upgrade command of Angular CLI: ng update @angular/cli@angular/core
The verdict
Considering all the above features, Angular team has certainly made developers’ job much easier and simpler. Angular 8 looks like a much more accessible solution focused on the modern technological trends. The framework is getting smoother, and the Angular platform keeps getting better.