What Makes Angular a Go-to Option for Web App Development?

Angular is a TypeScript-based open-source front-end framework used to develop mobile and desktop web applications. The framework was created by Google with its initial release taking place in September 2016. Angular has significantly evolved over the years, and today, it is widely used by developers to build interactive and dynamic single-page applications. What makes it special is its ability to eliminate unnecessary code and create lighter and faster web apps- one of the reasons why it is considered to be one of the best modern-day front-end frameworks.

Also Read: React vs Angular: Which is better and Why?

Features of Angular

Angular comprises some amazing features that have surged its popularity in web development. The features have been categorized into-

Cross-Platform

1. Progressive Web Apps

Angular allows you to develop powerful progressive web applications (PWAs). The framework possesses the capabilities to deliver app-like experiences and can help build PWAs that exhibit high performance and supports offline usage. A progressive web app has a zero-step installation process as it doesn’t need to be downloaded from the app store but can be added on the home screen like a native app.

2. Desktop Apps

Angular lets you build desktop applications across Mac, Windows, and Linux using the Electron framework. It also has the ability to access native OS APIs.

3. Native Apps

Although Angular is naturally suited for web app development, augmenting it with NativeScript helps build apps for Android and iOS as well. 

Speed and Performance

1. Code Generation

Angular transforms your code into templates that is greatly optimized for the latest JavaScript virtual machines, and thus offers you the benefits of hand-written code having a framework’s productivity.

2. Universal

The framework offers a near-instant code rendering in HTML and CSS, and provides you with the first view of the application on Node.js®, .NET, PHP, and other servers. It also facilitates web crawlers through SEO by generating a static version of your app that is easily discoverable, navigable, and linkable.

3. Code Splitting

Compared to other frameworks, apps built with Angular offer faster loading, thanks to the component router, which delivers automatic code-splitting, and thus users only load code required to render the view they request.

Productivity

1. Templates

Angular lets you design UI views with plain and powerful template syntax in a quick span.

2. Angular CLI

It’s a command-line interface tool that is used to create and maintain Angular applications directly from a command shell.

3. IDEs

Angular helps you get intelligent code completion, instant errors, and other feedback in popular editors and IDEs.

Full Development

1. Testing

With a unit testing tool like Karma, developers can fix the broken code anytime. On the other hand, Protractor makes your scenario tests run faster and in a stable manner. Angular has multiple testing modules that ensure error-free code.

2. Animations

Using the Angular Framework allows you to create high-performance, complex choreographies, and animation timelines using a few lines of code through Angular’s intuitive API.

3. Accessibility

One of the remarkable features of Angular is that it assists you in developing accessible applications with ARIA-enabled components, developer guides, and a built-in a11y test infrastructure.

Architecture

Angular has an MVC-based architecture where MVC stands for Model, View, and Controller. An application is divided into these three segments.

– Model

The model is responsible for managing the application data and represents the shape of the data. It responds to the request received from View and instructions from the Controller to update itself.

– View

View in MVC is the User Interface and is used to display or represent the data to the end-users. They are script-based template systems such as JSP, ASP, and PHP and can be easily integrated with AJAX technology.

– Controller

The Controller acts as a connector between the Model and the View layer. It handles the user requests and performs interactions on the data model objects. The controller receives input, validates it, and then performs business operations that modify the state of the data model.

Also Read: The Different Software Architectural Patterns You Should Know About

In Angular, splitting up the application in MVC saves developers a lot of coding time as it does that on its own otherwise in a usual architecture, one has to write the code for the same.

Benefits of Angular

One of the key benefits of using Angular is that the framework helps you build dynamic applications without relying on third-party libraries. It also offers various other benefits for web app development, such as-

1. Declarative UI

To define the application’s UI, Angular uses HTML which is a less complex language than JavaScript. The former is a declarative and intuitive language as well. Using HTML saves your time in program flows and deciding what loads first. Specify your requirements and Angular will take care of it.

2. Two-way data binding

Angular framework synchronizes the Model and the View layer, which means that any change in the data in the Model introduces automatic changes to the View as well. This two-way data binding helps reduce the development time as it doesn’t require writing additional code to provide continual View and Model synchronization.

3. Dependency Injection

Dependency injection is the ability to add the functionality of components at runtime. Most of the time, in Angular, dependency injection is done by injecting a service class into a component or module class.

Dependencies explicate how different pieces of code interact with each other and how the modifications in one component impact the rest. It ultimately makes app development easy for developers.

4. Directives

Directives make it possible for the developers to assign special behavior to the Document Object Model (DOM), allowing them to develop rich and dynamic content with HTML. In other words, directives are custom HTML attributes that inform Angular to change the style or behavior of the DOM elements.

5. TypeScript

As mentioned at the beginning, Angular makes use of TypeScript to build applications, which ensures high security. It helps detect and eliminate bugs or errors at the early coding stage or during maintenance. TypeScript is one of the primary choices for front-end development. Compared to JavaScript, it has richer enums, interfaces, hybrid types, access modifiers, etc. Developers can directly debug TypeScript code in the browser or an editor if they have proper map files created during the build time.

6. Backed by Google

Another thing that attracts developers towards Angular is that the framework is backed by Google and provides Long-Term Support (LTS), thereby scaling up the Angular ecosystem. Moreover, Angular has a wide and strong community of developers. One can find tons of material on this framework, many useful third-party tools, and solutions to almost every arising issue.

The Bottom Line

Angular is undoubtedly one of the most popular frameworks currently. Many popular brands’ websites like Netflix, PayPal, Upwork, LinkedIn, etc. are running on Angular. Being fast, time-saving, and having the ability to adapt to technological advancements make this framework a go-to option for developers.

We, at Dew Solutions, also leverage the Angular framework to build web applications. Looking to build an app for your business? Contact our expert developers here.