What is Angular 18, What are Its Top Features and Updates

With the introduction of Angular 18, Google’s widely used web development framework has reached version 18.  After the release of Angular 17 in November 2023, the newer and the latest update was much awaited. In response to these demands, this Angular update makes it easier than ever to create scalable apps while also dramatically improving speed and development efficiency. 

What’s new in Angular 18?

Angular 17 supported the stability of existing projects and focused on features improving developer experience and application performance maintenance. Upgrade to Angular new version; it presents fresh ideas in state, data, and application logic flow and a new reactivity model. The simplification of utilising state and data management in Angular 18, helps developers to enter their creativity zones, free from complexities of managing state. By integrating reliable Firebase hosting with improved server-side rendering and new form control state change events, these key improvements in Angular 18 distinguish it from its predecessors.

Angular 18 Features Overview

Update Angular version to Angular 18, and you will get the chance to experience the wealth of features that help improve performance and make Angular web development smoother. Let’s take a look at what they are. 

1. Zoneless Application

One of Angular 18’s new features is improved support for “zoneless” applications. Zoneless applications that do not depend on zone.js for change detection provide several benefits, including greater performance, less complexity, and more explicit control over change detection.

Enabling apps to run without zone.js is one of the key aims of Signals. This could originally only be accomplished using Signal Components. Still, plenty has changed since then. At least, we can do this free from depending on Signal Components.

Benefits:

• Apps can achieve faster initial render times and better runtime performance by eliminating ZoneJs, therefore reducing their requirement.

• Removing ZoneJS lowers the general bundle size of our applications, which results in speedier page loads.

• ZoneJs removal simplifies the call stack, therefore simplifying the debugging process. This simplified technique helps you to track and fix problems in your app.

2. TypeScript 4.7 Support

Update angular version to have the complete support of TypeScript 4.7. This version will include an add-on in the attributes of it. These are the improvements available in Angular 18 that you can use today.

• Improved Read Only Support: It will provide a more reliable and safe approach for using the read-only keyword, therefore benefiting developers in security and efficiency.

• New Import Types: This will enable you to produce a modular, orderly code improving readability and efficiency.

• Template Literal Types: These days, you can carefully choose template forms and quickly and precisely find errors.

3. Route Redirects as a Function

The “redirectTo” field of the Route object can now be replaced with functions, allowing functions to manage redirects, owing to this Angular update. This makes routing more flexible. This method takes an object as input and returns either a string or the UrlTree based on the parsed URL parameters. This improves the usability and efficiency of online applications.

4. Hydration Support in CDK and Material

To guarantee consistent rendering behaviour, all Angular Material and CDK components, as well as primitives, are now completely hydration compatible.

5. Fallback content for ng-content 

The ng-content tag allows you to insert default content when you update Angular versions. One way to dynamically insert material into a component’s template is via the ng-content directive in Angular. The ng-content tag is the natural next step for this newly added functionality. Assuming a content tag does exist, the default content should be included inside the tag.

6. Latest NG-Template API

The new ng-template API removes the need to often use special selectors and generate new templates for Angular web development. The new API has the added benefit of being reusable. It eases the process of template application. 

Benefits:

• Improved Type Safety: Templates now allow for more exact type declarations. Using it helps in the detection of mistakes during compilation.

• Cleaner Code: Promotes code that is more declarative, legible, and easy to maintain.

• Improved Reusability: Makes it easier to create reusable parts with clear types.

7. Coalescing by Default

With version 18, both zoneless applications and apps using zone.js with coalescing enabled started using the same scheduler. Upgrade to Angular new version to enable zone coalescing by default to decrease the number of change detection cycles in new zone.js applications.

Considering this approach might create errors in apps that rely on the prior change detection mechanism, therefore, it is only enabled for new applications. Coalescing dramatically increases speed for certain applications using updated Angular by reducing needless change detection cycles.

Configure your NgZone provider in bootstrap application to enable event coalescing for ongoing projects. Event coalescing is made possible in this configuration, which helps in performance improvement by cutting down on unnecessary change detection cycles.

bootstrapApplication(App, {
  providers: [
    provideZoneChangeDetection({ eventCoalescing: true })
  ]
});

8. Better Firebase App Hosting

There are now many more ways to launch responsive Angular apps due to the new Angular update that added Firebase App Hosting. This hosting choice has made it a lot easier to deal with mixed rendering issues like pre-rendering, server-side rendering, and client-side rendering. Support for GitHub interaction and other Firebase products like Authentication, Cloud Firestore, and Vertex AI is built right into the framework. This is one of the best things about this feature.

9. New RedirectCommand

Update Angular version to experience the new RedirectCommand class that manages NavigationExtras. This tool will make it easier for Guards and Resolvers to redirect. Adding the RedirectCommand class makes things much easier to maintain, which makes it flexible to handle complicated routing patterns in Angular apps.

Top Use Cases of Angular 18

With the release of Angular 18, it’s just perfect to update Angular version and take   advantage of its latest features and performance improvements. You can now create more dynamic, efficient, and scalable apps with the help of this Angular update, which improves your development process and opens up additional use cases for Angular web development.

1. E-Commerce

With the new speed and user experience capabilities in this Angular update, you can build online shops that are fast, interactive, and easy for customers to use. To keep clients interested and increase sales, these upgrades are necessary. Customers will have a better experience purchasing on your e-commerce site due to the newest innovations in Angular web development, which improve load speeds and make interactions smoother.

2. ERP Systems

For all the benefits, you should update Angular version, especially if you’re working on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The Angular update in version 18 makes Angular development more effective and flexible by adding independent components and better TypeScript support. These changes are especially helpful for enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems because they make it easier to manage complicated designs and make sure that the code is of high quality.

If you use Angular development services, you can use these new features to build strong and useful ERP systems. You can be sure that your ERP apps will be built using the Angular framework to its fullest extent by adhering to these recommendations.

3. SaaS Development

It is suggested that you always use the most current version of Angular when making software as a service apps. With the Angular 18 update, developer tools have been improved, and reactive forms have been made more advanced. This makes Angular web development faster and more customizable. These updates are especially helpful for software as a service apps because they make development and release faster. This is important to stay ahead of the competition and keep users satisfied.

4. Finance Apps

With the new TypeScript support and stricter type, your financial app will be more stable and easier to maintain with this Angular update. In the world of finance, where reliability and accuracy are paramount, these features are absolutely necessary.

5. Content Management System (CMS)

The Directive Composition API, introduced in Angular 18, makes components more modular and reusable, making them perfect for building complicated processes for content management. Hire AngularJS developers to incorporate these new functions and make your content management system scalable, effective, and user-friendly.

Start Rolling with Angular 18

With the latest advancements in Angular 18, we can help you bring your app ideas and needs to life. Whether you are looking to upgrade to Angular new version, or begin a project from the base, our Angular development services can help you leverage its features like new reactivity model, and other upgraded features. Moving to Angular 18 isn’t only a technological change; it’s a calculated effort to reduce code complexity and increase component modularity. 

Partner with us and explore the full potential of Angular 18. Contact us now.