Angular 18 Revealed: Latest Features, Improvements, and Innovations

The world of web development is ever-changing; new technologies and updates keep coming out to shape this realm. Of all, Angular development services stand as one of the most popular and powerful frameworks in existence, reaching the edges of innovation a developer can bring out. On 22nd May 2024, the Angular team released Angular 18—a major update that generated quite a significant amount of excitement among the community of developers.

This new version includes many changes, additions, and under-the-hood optimizations aimed at improving the developer experience and performance of Angular applications. We will also demonstrate how most of these enhancements brought to Angular 18 will empower developers to create more resilient, performant, and maintainable applications—from ground-breaking new functionalities through important performance enhancements to genuinely helpful developer tools. Let’s get started!

Angular 18: What’s the Deal?

Angular v18 means a new reactivity model and heavy changes in state, data, and application logic flow. This version will reduce boilerplate code to help reduce the complexity of the state and increase maintainability.

Notable improvements include enhanced change detection, which improves performance. Next comes one of the new reactivity models: Simplified updates, faster, more efficient applications, easier state and data management, and a focus on creativity instead of complex state management.

 

What’s New in Angular 18?

Angular 18 adds a few features, mostly driven by improvements in performance, scalability, and timeout to improve user experience. These are highlighted below.

 

Zoneless Application:

Angular version 18 has experimental support for zoneless change detection. This reduces the reliance on Zone.js. The developer can turn on this feature easily by adding ‘ ‘provideExperimentalZonelessChangeDetection()’ to an application bootstrap process. This change allows the improvement in performance and ease in development concerning components on which ‘ ‘ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush’ is applied.

 

Redirects using a function in Routes:

Angular 18 enables functions to handle redirects against static strings in only the ‘redirectTo’ property of the Route object. This adds to routing flexibility, whereby now functions are allowed with the capability to parse URL parameters and then return a string or UrlTree for navigation.

const routes: Routes = [
   { path: 'first-component', component: FirstComponent },
   {
     path: 'old-user-page',
     redirectTo: ({ queryParams }) => {
        const errorHandler = inject(ErrorHandler);
        const userIdParam = queryParams['userId'];
      
        if (userIdParam !== undefined) {
          return `/user/${userIdParam}`;
        } else {
          errorHandler.handleError(new Error('Attempted navigation to user page without user ID.'));
          return '/not-found';
        }
     },
   },
   { path: 'user/:userId', component: OtherComponent },
];

TypeScript 5.4 Support:

Angular 18 supports TypeScript 4.7 with features such as Template Literal Types, improved Read-only Support, and new Import Types. It has made improvements to type safety, read-only understanding, and modularity in Angular applications.

 

Latest ng-template API:

Angular 18 comes with a new ng-template API to get more reusability of the props templates and remove the repetition of making new templates with specific selectors.

 

Upgrade of Debugging Tools:

Advanced debugging abilities are included in Angular 18, allowing inspection of the state of your application, source map debugging, component tree, data bindings, and performance profiling.

 

New Official Documentation Website:

The official Angular documentation site is now hosted on angular.dev. There, you will find a modernized experience with an interactive tutorial, live examples, improved search, reimagined guides, and simplified navigation.

 

Hydration Support in CDK and Material:

Now, all the components of Angular Material and CDK are hydratable, which means they are going to behave the same during render in different environments.

 

Unified Control State Change Events:

Angular 18 adds an ‘events’ property in the ‘FormControl’, ‘FormGroup’, and ‘FormArray’ classes. This provides a way for a developer to subscribe for events on every form control, offering granular change tracking covering changes in value, touch state, pristine status, and control status.

const nameControl = new FormControl('name', Validators.required);

nameControl.events.subscribe(event => {

 // Handle individual form control events

});

 

Coalescing On-by-Default:

Coalescing of events is enabled in Angular 18 by default for all new applications using zone.js with coalescing. This enhancement decreases the number of change detection cycles, appending enhanced performance to certain applications.

 

Event Replay:

Angular 18 offers event replay as a dev preview. It can be enabled by users using ‘withEventReplay()’. In doing so, event replay will guarantee that the user’s experience is smooth during hybrid rendering scenarios.

 

Steps to Install Angular 18:

To install Angular 18, you’ll use npm (Node Package Manager), which includes essential Angular tools. Follow these steps in your command line interface (CLI):

• Open your CLI application.
• Enter the following command and press enter:

npm install --global @angular/cli@next

This command installs the latest version of Angular CLI on your computer.

 

Stability and Improved Features:

Angular 18 expands upon the advancements presented in Angular 17 with several intriguing new features. The following are the main features of this release that are now stable:

• Indicators:

Signals have stabilized, making them an effective tool for controlling condition and responsiveness. This feature makes state management more user-friendly by making it easier to create dynamic and responsive user interfaces.

• Deferred perspectives:

Since deferrable views are now stable, developers can load views only when needed, greatly reducing initial load times and optimizing resource management.

• Integrated control flow:

Angular 18’s integrated control flow directives are more reliable. Which facilitates the effective management of intricate user interface logic. This improves code maintainability and decreases the requirement for special directives.

 

Bottom line:

It appears that the new reactivity model for developers is Angular 18. The Angular community advises having a solid understanding of Angular 17 before switching to Angular 18 for new projects. The most recent framework will guarantee cleaner code and enhanced parts and instruments. The upcoming version will make a big difference and be released soon.

Explore the power of Angular 18! Whether you’re looking to hire an Angular development company in India or need dedicated Angular development services, hire Angular Development Services India from Tuvoc Technologies with top-notch skills for your web applications. Embrace the future of Angular development—partner with us today!