What is Angular?
Angular is a web framework written in the TypeScript language and includes a CLI, a language service, a debugging tool, and a rich collection of first-party libraries.
Libraries included in the Angular framework provided out of the box are called first-party libraries.
Angular enables developers to build scalable web applications with TypeScript, a strict syntactic superset of JavaScript, which we will learn about in Chapter 2, Introduction to TypeScript.
The official Angular documentation can be found at https://angular.dev.
The official Angular documentation is the most up-to-date resource for Angular development. It’s preferable to use it over other external resources while developing with Angular.
Google created Angular. The first version, 1.0, was released in 2012 and was called AngularJS. AngularJS was a JavaScript framework, and web applications built with it were written in JavaScript.
In 2016, the Angular team decided to make a revolutionary change in AngularJS. They collaborated with the TypeScript team at Microsoft and introduced the TypeScript language into the framework. The next version of the framework, 2.0, was written in TypeScript and rebranded as Angular with a different logo than AngularJS.
In 2022, Angular entered a new era of evolutionary advancements known as the Angular Renaissance. During that period, the framework picked up momentum in web development by introducing major innovations focused on enhancing the Developer Experience (DX) and optimizing application performance, such as:
- A simple and modern approach to authoring Angular applications
- Improved reactivity patterns to manage application state efficiently
- The integration of Server-Side Rendering (SSR) techniques to improve performance
A major milestone in the Angular Renaissance era was Angular 17, when the Angular team decided to rebrand the framework with a new logo and colors, reflecting the recent changes and setting the vision for future advancements.
In this book, we will cover Angular 19, the latest major stable version of the Angular framework. AngularJS reached the end of its life in 2022, and it is no longer supported and maintained by the Angular team.
Angular is based on the most modern web standards and supports all the evergreen browsers. You can find more details about the specific version support of each browser at https://angular.dev/reference/versions#browser-support.
In the following section, we will learn the benefits of choosing Angular for web development.
