Difference Between Angular and AngularJS

Quick Summary: AngularJS and Angular development frameworks remain the leading frameworks for application development in 2022 and beyond. When considering the angular and angularjs difference, it's important to note that Angular significantly outperforms AngularJS, and migrating to Angular is crucial for building modern, high-performance applications. But to decide which one to use for your upcoming projects requires an in-depth understanding of Angular vs AngularJS.

Introduction

Angular and AngularJS are both popular frameworks developed by Google, but they have key differences. AngularJS, released in 2010, is based on JavaScript and follows an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. It is mainly used for building single-page applications (SPAs).

Angular, on the other hand, is a complete rewrite introduced in 2016 and is a typescript based framework. By leveraging static typing, Angular provides type safety, improves developer productivity, and enhances code organization, offering enhanced performance and features like two-way data binding, modular architecture, and improved dependency injection.

While AngularJS is suitable for smaller projects, Angular is designed for modern web applications with advanced features, making it ideal for scalable and complex web applications with better tooling and development support.

Major Difference between Angular and AngularJS (Angular Vs AngularJS)

The main difference between Angular and AngularJS is that Angular is a complete rewrite of AngularJS based on Typescript, offering improved performance and a component-based architecture, whereas AngularJS relies on plain JavaScript and a directive-based approach. The differences between Angular and AngularJS include their underlying architecture, performance capabilities, and modern tooling support. You can compare Angular and AngularJS to see how each framework has evolved and which is more suitable for current web development needs.

The general consideration of these frameworks for your business needs would be determined by your goals and expectations for that project.

Key Takeaways

Angular is based on Typescript and uses a component-based structure, while AngularJS uses JavaScript and an MVC pattern.
The differences between Angular and AngularJS impact performance, scalability, and tooling.
When you compare Angular and AngularJS, consider their evolution and relevance for modern applications.

Let's look at this article to learn the difference between Angular and AngularJS or Angular vs AngularJS, along with their concepts.

Angular Vs AngularJS Difference

Let's start with an in-depth overview of Angular, its features, and pros vs. cons.

Overview of Angular

Angular is an open-source web framework that is entirely free to use. It was developed by Google and released in September 2016 for public use. Although it is considered a Javascript-based framework, its primary programming language is TypeScript. An angular application is built using the Angular framework and TypeScript, featuring a component-based structure that enables modular development.

Since its initial release in 2016, Angular has seen several major updates, with new angular framework versions introducing enhanced features and improvements. Notable versions include Angular 14 and Angular 19, each bringing advancements in performance, tooling, and developer experience.

Developed by Microsoft, TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, which means that TypeScript has all the capabilities JS has, plus some additional features.

The angular framework is primarily used for developing fully-functional web apps with modern design and highly dynamic behavior. Angular's architecture is built around interconnected components, promoting modularity, encapsulation, and reusability. It also offers built in support for mobile development, performance optimization, and integration capabilities, making it suitable for scalable and responsive applications. The angular router provides a built-in, component-based routing system for seamless navigation in single-page applications. Additionally, developers often use third party tools such as IDEs and build systems to streamline Angular development and improve productivity.

Features of Angular

Cross-Platform: The angular cross-framework platform enables you to create stunning UIs for web and native mobile and desktop applications. Also, the framework is convenient for developing macOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems applications.
Makes Use of TypeScript: Angular uses the programming language TypeScript, ensuring fewer errors during the compile time as the types of variables are defined beforehand. Also, any piece of JavaScript code is valid TypeScript code.
Angular CLI (Command Line Interface): This feature lets you speed up the development process. From setting up the project to adding components, there are multiple tasks that you can carry out by simply using Angular’s native CLI.
Unit Testing Support: With Angular, it becomes feasible to execute unit testing hassle-free and, thus, ensure that your code has minimal bugs.
Dependency Injection Feature: Angular's dependency injection feature allows efficient management of dependencies for components and services, enhancing modularity and code reusability by enabling services like data fetching and validation to be injected into multiple components.
Data Binding Feature: Angular provides a powerful data binding feature that synchronizes the model and view, improving performance and responsiveness. It supports different types of data binding, such as one-way and two-way, to suit various application needs.
One Way Data Binding: By default, Angular uses one way data binding, which optimizes performance by reducing unnecessary DOM updates and limiting data flow to a single direction, while still allowing two-way binding when needed via ngModel.

Pros and Cons of Angular

Let’s examine the pros and cons of the Angular development framework.

One of the main advantages of Angular is that it enables developers to develop applications for both web and mobile platforms. Angular also supports building native mobile applications and Progressive Web Apps, providing flexibility for different project needs. Additionally, Angular includes optimizations for mobile browsers, such as responsive design and mobile-friendly features, making it a strong choice for mobile development.

Pros of Angular

The latest Angular framework version use TypeScript, which allows code models and optimization using the OOPS concept.
It holds a mobile support framework.
Angular enables developers to develop applications for both web and mobile platforms.
Angular provides support for native mobile applications and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Angular includes optimizations for mobile browsers, offering better performance and responsive design on mobile devices.
Angular supports the modifications for an improved hierarchical dependencies system along with modularity.
A developer can perform a function with the features such as syntax for type checking, Dart, lambda operators, Angular CLI, ES5, iterators, and ES6.
Angular follows semantic versioning, which contains a major-minor-patch arrangement.
One of the significant advantages of Angular is that it delivers the event of simplest routing.

Cons of Angular

When it comes to the event of set-up, Angular JS is less complex than Angular2+ versions.
It is not ideal for creating an output of simple web applications.
Here, in Angular, directing a comprehensive range of browsers is challenging as it does not consist of all the features of modern versions.

Overview of AngularJS

Angular JS is a legacy version of the Angular framework that is also an open-source JavaScript framework suitable for front-end web development. This trending framework has a broad scope for structuring exceptional single-page web apps. In AngularJS's architecture, the MVC acts as the central component responsible for managing data, logic, and application behavior, forming the core structure around which the app's functionality is built.

This framework builds templates using HTML. AngularJS controllers and directives interact with the document object model (DOM) to define behavior and add functionality to web page elements. It is popular and demanding in the developer community because of its scalability and natural intuitiveness. Simply put, when a programmer builds a Single-page application with AngularJS, the page loads quickly, delivering an excellent user experience and much easier to maintain. AngularJS was historically used to build performant web applications due to its architecture and features that optimized development speed, maintainability, and user experience.

“Do you know: there are more than 4 billion websites built with Angular JS around the globe as of 2022, and the number is rising sharply?”

AngularJS Features

Below are the highlights of AngularJS features.

Use of Plain JavaScript: AngularJS framework uses plain JavaScript programming language, which implies that the models in AngularJS are plain JavaScript objects. This feature makes it easy to test and maintain the code created with AngularJS.
Controllers and Directives: The directive and controllers in AngularJS allow you to choose the functionality and have complete control over the application behavior.
Reusable Components: With AngularJS, you can develop reusable elements that you can employ multiple times within an application. To create these components, you need to make use of directives. A component can define a particular functionality.
Dependency Injections: AngularJS uses dependency injections to enhance modularity, readability, and reusability. This feature allows objects to depend on services without managing their construction, making the architecture more flexible and maintainable.
Routing: Routing is the feature that enables you to switch between different views of an application. Simply put, routing allows users to navigate via different pages of a website or various sections of a web app.

Recommended Read: Top 5 AngularJs Features you Should Know

Pros and Cons of AngularJS

Below are a few pros and cons of the Angular JS development framework.

Pros of AngularJS

AngularJS enables developers to develop applications with dynamic and responsive user interfaces, thanks to its powerful data binding techniques.
It supports two-way data binding, which simplifies the synchronization between the model and the view.
The framework offers reusable components, making code maintenance easier.
Dependency injection in AngularJS improves testability and code organization.

Cons of AngularJS

AngularJS was created for designers. So it is not as developer-friendly as Angular is.
Impossible to build SEO-optimized web applications without backend HTML rendering.
Problem with the scale of implementation, which is a little rough and poor.

Building Angular Applications

Building dynamic web applications with Angular is streamlined and efficient, thanks to the framework’s comprehensive solution for developing single page applications. Angular’s component-based architecture allows developers to create reusable components, making it easier to manage and scale complex web applications. The powerful dependency injection system simplifies the management of services and dependencies, promoting cleaner and more maintainable code.

One of the standout features of the Angular framework is its two-way data binding, which ensures that changes in the user interface are instantly reflected in the underlying data model and vice versa. This improved data binding, combined with Angular’s advanced change detection mechanisms, results in responsive and interactive user experiences.

Developers can take advantage of the Angular CLI (Command Line Interface) to quickly scaffold new projects, generate Angular components, and automate tasks such as unit testing and building for production. The CLI tool supports both JavaScript and TypeScript, giving teams flexibility in their choice of programming language.

Angular’s hierarchical dependency injection system and support for lazy loading enable the development of high performance web applications by optimizing resource usage and loading only the necessary modules when required. These features, along with robust unit testing capabilities, make Angular a preferred choice for building dynamic, scalable, and maintainable web applications.

A Key Comparison Between Angular and AngularJS (Angular Vs AngularJS)

Let’s briefly overview the difference between Angular and AngularJS.

Key Difference Between Angular and AngularJS

Category	Angular Js	Angular
Architecture	It Supports the Model-View-Controller design (MVC). It is a software design pattern for developing web applications.	It employs components and directives. Here, components are directives with templates.
Supported Language	It supports only Javascript	It supports Javascript and Typescript both.
Routing	For routing configuration, it uses $routeprovider.when()	For routing configuration, it uses @Route Config{(…)}
Mobile Support	It does not provide mobile support	It provides mobile support
Syntax	Ng directive is used for an image/property or an event.	“[ ]” uses for property binding and “()” uses for event binding.
Structure	Less complex than Angular	Better structure, seamless to create and maintain large applications.
Speed	Minimize the time and development effort due to its feature of two-way binding	Angular 4 is the fastest version yet.
Examples Application	Netflix, iStock	Gmail, Upwork
Third Party Tools	Uses third party tools for development and testing, such as IDEs and build systems, to streamline setup and scaffolding.	Relies on third party tools for application setup, testing, and scaffolding, making development more efficient compared to manual configurations.

The Role of the Angular Team

The Angular team is at the heart of the ongoing success and evolution of the Angular framework. As the official maintainers, they are dedicated to ensuring that Angular applications remain at the forefront of modern web development. Their commitment is evident in the regular release of updates, patches, and new features that enhance data binding, improve performance, and expand mobile support for both web and mobile applications.

Beyond technical updates, the Angular team provides a wealth of resources for developers, including comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and active community forums. This extensive support network empowers developers to confidently build and maintain large scale applications, knowing they have access to expert guidance and troubleshooting.

The team’s focus on unit testing, improved data binding, and mobile support ensures that Angular remains a robust framework for developing both mobile and web applications. By fostering a vibrant community and maintaining a high standard for the framework, the Angular team enables developers to deliver performant, reliable, and scalable solutions for a wide range of web development needs.

Conclusion

The above comparison between Angular and AngularJS (Angular vs AngularJS) states the valuable concepts and functionality of both versions. While Angular is used to develop bigger and small applications, Angular.JS is a robust framework used to develop scalable client-side website applications with less development effort and time.

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Frequently Asked Questions [FAQs]

Q: Is Angular better than AngularJS?

Yes, Angular is generally considered better than AngularJS due to its improved performance, better tooling support, improved dependency injection system, and better support for mobile development. However, Angular has a steeper learning curve than AngularJS due to its more complex architecture and use of TypeScript. Ultimately, the choice between Angular and AngularJS depends on the specific needs and requirements of the project.

Q: Is Angular front end or back end?

Angular is a robust web framework that helps with client-side or front-end development. It supports the TypeScript programming language that developers can employ to design the user interface of applications.

Q: Do I need to learn AngularJS before Angular?

No, you don't necessarily need to learn AngularJS before learning Angular. Angular is a complete rewrite of AngularJS, with a different architecture and syntax, so learning AngularJS is not a prerequisite. However, having some experience with JavaScript and web development in general can be helpful when learning Angular.

Q: What is better Angular or AngularJS?

Both Angular and Angular JS frameworks have substantial benefits, but one can leverage more advantages with the latest version.

Difference Between Angular and AngularJS

Introduction