Angular vs AngularJS : Key Differences You Must Know

Nowadays, many javascript frameworks are available in the market that is explicitly used for web and mobile app development. If we talk about front-end development, Angular and AngularJS are the most popular frameworks that are hitting the market.

But what’s the major difference between angular vs angularjs? Do they really differ from each other? Such questions might be hitting your mind. To answer such questions, we have come up with an article that demonstrates the difference between Angular vs AngularJS.

Before we start to understand the concept of Angular Vs AngularJS, let us have a look at the basics of AngularJS and the Angular framework and explaore the angular and angularjs difference.

Key Takeaways

What are the Types of Angular Versions?

We will differentiate between all the versions of Angular in detail below. But before that, let’s understand what every version brings to the table and the major difference between Angular and AngularJS.

Angular JS

• It’s an official name, but it is often known as Angular 1. 
• An open-source and front-end web application framework that typically uses JavaScript technology to build single-page applications.
• You can effectively utilize HTML programming language as a template for responsive design. 
• In AngularJS, you can quickly combine the data and expression syntax for designing and developing performant web applications.
• AngularJS helps simplify the ready-unit testing feature and application development process by strictly following a framework for client-side model–view–controller (MVC) and Model–View–ViewModel (MVVM) architectures. In short, it uses component-based web application architecture.
• You can even create components that are vital in building rich Internet applications.
• It uses the controller approach where the view communicates using a $scope.

Angular 2

• The next version of AngularJS is Angular 2. 
• Unlike AngularJS, Angular 2 is not a regular update. 
• It’s a complete rewrite of its counterpart. 
• Angular 2 uses the component-based approach in developing HTML and JavaScript Web applications for your business needs.

Angular 4

• Angular 4 is a typescript-based open-source and front-end framework for web app development and plays an essential role in dealing with cross-platform development.
• Being the successor of Angular 2, Angular 4 is not a complete rewrite, and both Angular versions use the same patterns and concepts.
• Angular 4 comes up with advanced and noteworthy AngularJS features like smaller and faster apps, an animation package, AS keywords, etc.

Angular 5

• After Angular 4, Angular 5 was launched with more advanced and enhanced features for efficiently designing and building web applications.
• The excellent part of Angular 5 is that Angular makes it easy for AngularJS developers working in leading AngularJS development companies to remove unnecessary codes from their applications.
• Other improved features are a code-sharing feature, less time for assembling dynamic web applications, and so on. 
• Moreover, it has DOM elements support, and its compiler helps with incremental compilation.

Angular 6

• The improvements in this Angular version 6 are even better than previous versions. 
• Angular 6 is the framework introduced to make the web parts of applications that can quickly deal with most cutting-edge web and popular mobile browsers.
• Its impressive features of Angular 6 bring convenience in creating Angular web component and using it in various HTML pages later.

Angular 7

• Angular 7 framework helps you to build web apps using leading technologies like HTML, Javascript, and Typescript. 
• With the help of Angular 7, you can quickly grab the features like better mobile apps with CLI prompts, drag-and-drop functionality, improved app performance, component dev kit (CDK), and virtual scrolling with this framework. 

Angular 8

• Angular 8 supports Ivy as the default rendering engine. 
• Some of the best features of this mobile support AngularJS framework include differential loading of modern JavaScript, support for web workers, and dynamic support for lazy loading routers.
• Angular 8 was more famous for the much-anticipated Ivy compiler as an opt-in feature. 

Since Angular version 9+, there are some minor updates introduced compared to previous versions.

Angular 9 

• Angular 9 came up with new and enhanced Ivy compiler and runtime features, a better debugging process, quick ready-unit testing feature, and many more improvements that make it easy for you to deal with the web app development process easier.
• Angular 9 is most popularly known for its Ivy default compiler and improved bundle size.

Angular 10 

• Angular 10 represents new dynamic features of the “new date range picker” in the Angular Material UI (User Interface) component library.
• Moreover, you will also find additional features like warnings for CommonJS imports and more exciting features on the Angular 10 version. 

Angular 11

• Like Angular 10, Angular 11 include stricter types, automatic font inlining, and Angular router performance improvements.
• Angular 11 is an Angular framework version that allows you to smoothly design and develop applications from scratch.

Related Post: Angular Vs React Vs Vue

Angular 12

• In Angular 12, the View Engine has finally been deprecated.
• Angular 12 allows you to migrate from legacy i18n message IDs quickly
• It allows you to start new or running tasks, and you can even furnish alternatives with famous 3rd party comprehensive solution in the CLI tool.
• It eliminates support for IE11 in Angular v12.

Angular 13

• Angular 13 support TypeScript 4.4.
• Angular 13 is 100% Ivy
• A new type called FormControlStatus has been added in Angular 13. 
• In Angular13, the router will no longer supplant the browser URL whenever the new navigation cancels the ongoing navigation.

Angular 14

Angular 14 is Angular version that came up with the latest features and updates that you must be aware of while developing single-page applications or upgrading the Angular versions.

• In Angular 14, TypeScript versions older than 4.6.0 are no longer supported.
• Make sure you are using Node 14.15.0 or later.
• It supports Reactive form types such as FormControl and FormGroup now have generic type parameters and infer stricter types.

Angular 15

Angular 15 release date is 16th November 2022 and brought a big smile to Angular developers globally. The reason was quite obvious as they were expecting something big to announce and it really happened..

• Stable standalone components API
• Develop a multi-route application
• Directive Composition API
• Easily deal with web and mobile development
• Stable “NgOptimizedImage” Image Directive
• Easily Reduce Boilerplate in Guards
• Better Stack Traces For Debugging Process
• CDK Listbox
• ESBuild Support of Angular 15

Angular 16

Angular v16 has arrived, bringing with it a host of new angular features and enhancements that will excite developers and tech enthusiasts alike.

• Angular v16 includes several performance improvements, such as faster compilation times, faster startup times, and improved change detection.
• Angular v16 includes improvements to the Angular CLI, such as faster builds, improved error messages, and better support for web workers.
• Angular v16 includes updated and improved documentation, making it easier for developers to get started with Angular and find the information they need.
• Angular v16 includes improved compatibility with TypeScript 4.4 and higher, as well as other dependencies such as Node.js.
• Angular v16 also includes some new features, such as support for custom element tags and improved support for internationalization (i18n).

What is the AngularJS Framework?

AngularJS is an open-source framework used to build dynamic and interactive web applications. It lets developers use HTML as a template language and enhances it by adding custom elements and behaviors through JavaScript.

The key purpose of AngularJS is to turn static HTML into dynamic content that responds to user actions in real time. Developers write the logic in JavaScript files, which are then connected to web pages using the <script> tag. This approach makes it easier to create structured, maintainable, and efficient web applications while reducing repetitive coding tasks.

Top Features of AngularJS Framework

After having a look at the basics of what is Angular, it’s high time to explore the best features of the AngularJS framework.

1. MVC (Model-View-Controller)

   AngularJS framework typically uses the Model-View-Controller approach for developing web applications. This design pattern is meant explicitly for splitting the business logic layer, the data layer, and the presentation layer into separate sections.

   • Model is considered to be the lowest level of the pattern specifically for maintaining data.
   • The View is responsible for displaying all or a portion of the data to the user.
   • The Controller is nothing but a software code that efficiently controls the interactions between the Model and View.

2. Data Model Binding

   AngularJS makes it easy for the web developers to add a few writing code snippets directly into the structure, irrespective of writing additional external code to bind data. Furthermore, once you add some code snippets, it becomes easy for you to attach data directly from HTML control to application data.

3. Writing Less Code

   AngularJS framework has become a boon for Angular JS developers as it allows them to write less amount of external code for DOM manipulation. Moreover, the developers are free from writing long code structures for building web applications.

4. Unit Testing

   The Google development team has not only introduced the AngularJS framework but has defined a unit testing framework named “Karma”. The primary role of Karma is to help developers to design a unit testing approach for AngularJS applications.

5. Directives

   In AngularJS, directives are special markers or attributes added to HTML elements. They tell AngularJS to apply certain behaviors or modify the DOM in real time. This allows developers to make web pages interactive and dynamic without writing complex JavaScript code directly into the page.

   AngularJS comes with built-in directives, such as ng-model or ng-repeat, which handle common tasks like data binding and looping through items. Developers can also create their own custom directives to suit specific needs. Overall, directives help extend HTML’s capabilities, making web applications more responsive and user-friendly.

6. Not-Browser Specific

   Angular applications do not involve any browser constraint. Therefore, it can efficiently run on all major web and mobile browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE8, and Android, except internet explorer 8.0.

7. Dependency Injection

   With the help of dependency injection, it becomes easy for AngularJS developers to design and build applications faster. Moreover, dependency injection it allows an application easier to test. It allows you to ask for your dependencies rather than having to look for them or make them by yourself.

AngularJS Architecture

• Controller: The Controller is an integral part of the AngularJS application. Its primary duty is to represent the essential layer that typically covers the business logic. The event-triggering or event-binding function occurs, whenever the user makes clicks on it. All the essential functions are stored inside the controller.

• Views: Views are an essential aspect of the AngularJS application that is primarily used to represent the presentation layer that is provided to the end-users.

• Models: Models are used to represent your data. The data in your model can be as simple as just having primitive declarations. For example, if you are maintaining a student application, your data model could just have a student id and a name.
  Or it can also be complex by having a structured data model. If you are maintaining a car ownership application, you can have structures to define the vehicle itself in terms of its engine capacity, seating capacity, etc.

Pros and Cons of AngularJS Framework

Pros of AngularJS

1. Two-Way Data Binding

   AngularJS facilitate faster and easier data binding which doesn’t require a developer to interfere at all. Referred to as two-way data binding, it ensures that ongoing changes made to view are instantly displayed in the model and vice-versa.

2. DOM Manipulation

   Unlike other popular JavaScript frameworks, Angular conveniently relieves the developer of actively manipulating DOM (Document Object Model), all thanks to its two-way data binding approach. It means that the developer saves time and effort in code, performing input binding, translating and updating the DOM elements.

3. Improved Server Performance

   Because it supports caching and many other processes, Angular reduces the burden on server CPUs. It means that the server performs extremely well thanks to reduced traffic and because it only serves static typing files and responds to API calls.

4. Faster Application Prototyping

   Rapid prototyping is indeed a buzzword thanks to the existence of frameworks like Angular. In no time and by writing significantly less code, you can develop app prototypes with good functionality, obtain feedback and make changes without getting annoyed.

5. Responsive Web

   There’s nothing better than arranging an outstanding end-user experience and AngularJS makes it possible by letting responsive, fast-loading and seamlessly-navigating websites and apps.

6. Highly Testable Products

   One of the underlying aspects of Angular is that it builds highly testable websites and applications. Allowing unit testing and end-to-end testing makes easy testing and debugging much simpler than you can imagine. Hierarchical dependency injection, for example, allow various components to be isolated and mocked. Protractor, Jasmine and Karma are other unique testing and third-party tools that the framework offers.

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Cons of AngularJS

1. JavaScript Support Mandatory

   It’s pretty obvious that your computer or laptop usually handles the server. And your server must be a plain JavaScript-supported system as you need to control the overall design. Moreover, the users will not be able to access your system if your server is not Javascript-supported.

2. Inexperience with the MVC Approach

   The Angular framework becomes somewhat complex if developers use the traditional approach to develop mobile and web applications. It becomes possible for the developers to adopt the MVC approach for making the Angular responsive application. AAngular becomes time-consuming if they are unaware of the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern.

3. The scopes

   Scopes in the AngularJS framework can be rugged for the developers to handle the functionality. The primary reason is it follows a layered and arranged hierarchical dependency injection system. Besides, debugging the scopes becomes the prime destruct for the developer while developing the application.

4. Other Intricate Features

   Utilizing directives in AngularJS is somewhat challenging for the developers. Apart from directives, other essential AngularJS features like dependency injections and factories bring more complexities for traditional developers.

5. Possible Time Consumption

   With the help of the AngularJS framework, the browser may usually take time to make pages of websites and applications. The primary reason behind it may be due to overloaded browser functionality like DOM manipulation.

6. Tough Learning

   Instead of approaching a straight learning graph, the developers may find it challenging to adopt the AngularJS framework. In addition, the limited documentation available may further affect the learning process. However, the day-by-day extending Angular community is making it more manageable.

What is Angular?

Angular is a popular open-source framework for building modern web applications. It evolved from AngularJS, which was the first version, but today, when we say “Angular,” we usually refer to versions 2 and above.

Angular helps developers create dynamic, client-side applications using HTML, JavaScript, or TypeScript—a language from Microsoft that compiles to JavaScript. It offers a collection of libraries and tools to make web apps faster, more secure, and maintainable.

Developers use Angular to create components, manage data with services, write templates in HTML, and organize everything within modules for scalable, efficient applications.

Top Features of Angular Framework

1. MVC Architecture

   MVC stands for Model-View-Controller. Model typically manages your application data, while data display is handled by View. The primary role of the Controller is to play as an intermediator between View and Model.

   The MVC architecture in the Angular framework easily splits the application and writes the code for connecting the same approach. The AngularJS developers need to break the entire code and leave the rest to the Angular framework. With the help of this component-based architecture, it saves a significant amount of coding time.

2. Two-Way Data Binding

   The View layer in the Angular framework represents the Model layer, and it remains in perfect synchronization. Therefore, if the developer makes any consecutive change in the model, the users can see it in the view model automatically. Thus,data binding is one such approach that is solely responsible for minimizing crucial development time.

3. Few Code Framework

   Compared to other front-end frameworks, Angular is considered a low code framework. In simple words, we can say that the developers need not write different code to link the MVC layers.

   Moreover, they don’t require specific code to view manually also. In addition, the directives are isolated from the app code. These all together automatically minimize the development time.

4. Angular CLI (Command Line Interface)

   The Angular CLI plays a vital role in AngularJS development services. It includes various built-in AngularJS features like SCSS support or routing features making the application more responsive.

   However, many Angular CLI available in the market makes the Angular development easy for the developers. Some of the standard Angular CLI are as follows:

   • ng new: To initialize Angular app development or to create a new workplace, this command plays an important role.
   • ng generate: With the help of this command, the developers can quickly create new components, services, routes, and pipes. Not only that, it allows you to create simple test shells for your Angular applications.
   • ng serve: This command allows you to test your Angular app on a local server.
   • Test, Lint: The developers can efficiently perform smart unit and end-to-end tests for your entire coding structure. And ng lint helps to run programs to analyze code for possible errors.

5. TypeScript

   Angular strictly follows TypeScript language. With its active support of TypeScript, Angular offers a persistent experience to the developers. Moreover, the developers find it easy to identify bugs and reduce developing time. TypeScript development services help you get high-performance mobile and web applications for business

   The primary role of TypeScript is to populate the root file configuration for easy compilation automatically. TypeScript has richer enums, interfaces, generics, hybrid types, union/intersection types, access modifiers, etc. than JavaScript technology.

6. Directives

   Being an integral part of Angular applications, Directives allow the developers to create custom HTML tags that usually serve as custom widgets. Developers can use these to decorate behavior-driven User Interfaces elements. Angular developers can efficiently handle the DOM manipulation as per the project needs.

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Angular Architecture

The Angular application architecture or we can say Angular’s component-based architecture typically includes the eight essential building blocks.

• Modules: Every Angular application has a mandatory root module, defined by the  name “AppModule”. It is nothing but the bootstrap terminology that is responsible for launching the application.
• Components: At least one component is essential for the Angular project that needs to be built. The root component and root component are two main components that connect the component hierarchy with a page document object model (DOM).
• Templates: The primary role of Angular template language is to simply combine the HTML attributes with Angular markup that can quickly modify HTML elements before they are displayed.
• Metadata: Metadata is functionality that informs Angular for class processing. It’s essentially used to decorate the class so that it can configure the expected behavior of a class.
• Data Binding: Data binding plays an important role in communication that acts as an intermediatory between a template and its related component.
• Directives: We can say that Angular components are nothing more than that of functional and logical components that contain directive with the template. Directives are the building blocks of Angular projects.
• Services: Service classes are created that play a vital role in data or logic presentation that isn’t associated with a specific view. The @Injectable decorator immediately precedes the service class definition.
• Dependency Injection: Dependency injection (DI) lets you keep your component classes lean and efficient. DI does not fetch all the data from a server, validate the user input, or log directly to the console instead they delegate such tasks to the services.

Pros and Cons of Angular Framework

Pros of Angular

• Google-supported Framework: Angular is a leading framework that is usually supported by Google, making it easy for the developers to build a dependable, trustworthy program. Moreover, the application works as per Google’s latest updates and announcements.

• Third-Party Integration Support: The good part of the Angular framework is that the developers can easily include third-party integration supports for the application. In addition, the developers can quickly utilize more Angular development tools to improve the overall form and function of their product.

• Faster Load Time: Faster load time and enhanced security are additional and essential features that Angular offers. With its “ahead-of-time” compiler functionality, Angular compiles HTML and TypeScript into JavaScript during the entire Angular development lifecycle. All the code is compiled before the browser even loads your web app.
• Customizable Framework: Angular supports various elements and modules, giving more power to the developer and designer. Apart from building elements and modules, it allows the Angular JS developers to include such elements directly to projects that were created using another framework.
• Dependency Injection: It’s the most advantageous for the developers, if and only if, they are aware of its usage. Designing and building multiple dependencies can be time-consuming for the developers, but it can be used well, especially for large-scale projects.

Cons of Angular

• Limited SEO Options: One of the major disadvantages that come with Angular is that it has limited SEO options and weak accessibility for search engine crawlers. Being that Google is the number one search engine globally, this issue persists for much longer before a comprehensive solution is presented in another Google update.
• Difficult to Learn: Another drawback that comes up with the Angular framework is that it can be quite difficult to learn.
• Time-Consuming: Angular framework is equipped with multiple web modules, coding languages, integrations and customizing capabilities. Initially, the developers require some amount of time to learn the basic structure of Angular. Once they are aware of the framework, it becomes easy to build a new Angular application from scratch.
• Application Scaling: Unless you’re working on a project of appropriate size and complexity, Angular can easily weigh you down. Save this one for the big-ticket assignments and you’ll fare just fine.
• Not Good For Simple Web App: To design and build simple web applications, Angular is not a good choice.

Understanding Components of Angular vs AngularJS

A key difference between Angular and AngularJS is how they handle components. AngularJS, built on JavaScript, uses controllers and scopes to manage application logic and data. It relies heavily on directives to add behavior to HTML.

In contrast, Angular (versions 2 and above) is built with TypeScript, offering a more structured, component-based architecture. Everything in Angular revolves around components, which combine template, logic, and styling in one unit. This makes Angular applications more modular, scalable, and easier to maintain compared to AngularJS.

Overall, Angular’s component-driven approach offers clearer organization than AngularJS’s controller and directive model.

Use of Directives Between Angular vs AngularJS

Directives play a central role in both AngularJS and Angular, but they work differently in each framework. AngularJS offers many built-in directives like ng-model and ng-bind, which are used for tasks such as two-way or one-way data binding.

In Angular (2+), directives are more structured and limited to standard forms, offering better consistency. For instance, Angular replaces ng-model with ngmodel and uses specific syntax for bindings—square brackets [ ] for one-way property binding and parenthese ( ) for event binding. For two-way binding, Angular use [ ( ) ].

Understanding these differences is crucial to writing efficient, clean code whether you’re working with AngularJS or the newer Angular versions.

Difference Between Angular vs AngularJS

The following table of Angular Vs AngularJS comparison depicts the complete difference between angular and angularjs the two front-end development technologies.

Related Post: Angular best practices

Angular vs AngularJS : Which is Better For Your Business Needs?

AngularJS is a leading framework that supports wide scope for developing single-page web applications for your business needs.

On the other hand, Angular versions are highly preferable as a robust front-end tool supplying AngularJS components that becomes a boon for Angular developers to deal with:

• Write and re-write
• Easy-to-use
• Readable
• Maintainable code

With its valuable concepts and functionalities, it gets the application to run fast and be stable. In fact, the Angular version provides several benefits to front-end developers, and that Angular makes the popular reason that many companies use Angular for their projects.

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