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Angular 11

“The Angular framework is used by 25.1% of developers across the globe” – states a survey report published by the renowned portal Statista in 2020. As per this report, Angular is the third most favorite choice of developers worldwide. This framework is known for its technical goodies and frequent updates. Each updated version intends to harness the latest technological innovations and improving the Angular experience. The proactive Angular team recently released yet another updated version, Angular11. The Angular11 release date is November14, 2020, and this release has strengthened Angular app development further.

Angular11 aims at addressing the bug-issues that have been raised by the community which ultimately intend to improve the developers’ experience. Furthermore, Angular11 ushers in a plethora of improvements, modifications, and deprecations for simplifying the developmental process. As such, every Angular App Development Company should be well versed with the prominent updates in Angular11.

This article will enlighten you about the new updates introduced in Angular11. So, get ready to embark on a journey into the world of Angular11.

The Notable Updates, Add-ons, Deprecations, and Modifications introduced in Angular11

Enhancements in Component Test Harnesses

Component test harnesses were initially introduced in the 9th update of Angular. It offered a sturdy and legible API surface that facilitated testing of Angular material. It enabled developers to interact with the components of Angular Material by making use of supported API during testing. However, this feature was only available for Angular Material so far. Angular11 has added harnesses for all the components. As a result, testing became much easier, and the developers now create sturdier test suites. Besides, Angular11 also introduces parallel functions, new APIs, and performance enhancements. The parallel function feature works with asynchronous actions during testing, as it allows developers to carry out several asynchronous interactions with components simultaneously. The manual change detection feature allows developers to disable the auto change detection mode while unit testing and gain a finer-grained access control of change detection.

Refurbished Hot Module Replacement (HMR) Mechanism

The existing mechanism of HMR (Hot Module Replacement), which enables Angular developers to replace modules without having to refresh the full browser, is refurbished in Angular11. Now, a CLI command is introduced so that the developers have to put so much lesser effort to configure HMR. To enable HMR, one simply needs to employ the ng serve command along with an hmr tag.

Operation Byelog Updates

Operation Byelog was one of the items when the Angular’s Roadmap was shared by the Angular team. The team’s objective was to put in lots of engineering efforts for triaging PRs and issues till they could clearly understand the needs of the huge community. Their initial intention of this goal was fulfilled with the release of Angular11. The reason is all issues have been triaged successfully in each one of the three existing monorepos. This will go on as a continual effort as new issues are reported. Moreover, all new issues that are reported will be triaged within a period of two weeks. This has minimized the size of the Angular backlog considerably. Additionally, this update has resolved some common concerns related to the router and forms.

Updates in Language Service Preview

The language service feature in Angular offers tools that ease out development and boost productivity as well. The erstwhile Language Service was based on View Engine. With Angular11, the Language Service is based on Ivy which is more robust and accurate as compared to the View Engine. After this update, the Language Service can accurately infer the generic sin templates as done by a TypeScript compiler.

Automatic Font-Inlining

Angular11 also introduces auto-inlining of fonts. This feature converts the icons and Google fonts to inline in the index HTML, each time the flag is set in angular.json under the build option. The fonts that are being linked and used with the app will be downloaded and inlined by the Angular CLI during compilation. For leveraging this update, you need to ensure the availability of connectivity while the build is running on CI. So, upgrade your apps to Angular11 for receiving this feature by default.

Faster Builds

Support for TypeScript 3.9 has been dropped and Angular11 supports only TypeScript 4.0. This deprecation intends to accelerate builds.
The ngcc update procedure has become two to four times faster than before when dependencies are being installed.

Experimental Support for Webpack 5

Webpack is employed for compiling numerous files into one single file or bundle. Webpack5 is the most recent version, though not fully stable yet. But Angular11 offers experimental support for Webpack5 so that they can be used together for trying out new things. As per Angular11 release notes the Angular team intends to expand this experimental support once Webpack5 is stable, for achieving smaller bundles and speedier builds.

Migrating to ESLint

With Angular11, the use of the popular Angular linting tool TSLint and Codelyzer has been deprecated and TSLint is replaced by ESLint. The future versions won’t be providing default implementation to lint Angular projects and hence the Angular team advises migrating to ESLint. The team has devised a three-step migration process for moving to ESLint from TSLint. The steps are:

Adding relevant dependencies
Running the schematic convert-tslint-to-eslint on a project
Removing TSLint configuration and using only ESLint.

Other noteworthy Updates

The Angular roadmap is updated to keep the users informed about the on-going priorities. The team intends to put more effort so that developers can provide early feedback that can be included in the final release.
Modifications have been made in the builder phase reporting to enhance its usability.
The new CLI output updates, simplify creating logs and reading reports.
Angular11 introduces lazy loading with the help of named outlets which was not possible earlier.

Final Takeaway

Angular11 is loaded with groundbreaking enhancements and profitable add-ons. To reap its benefits all you need to do is update to this most recent version.

Would like to leverage the goodies of Angular? Well then, reach out to the highly experienced and adept Angular app developers of Biz4Solutions, a distinguished mobile app development company that provides top-notch services to clients around the globe.

If you are willing to develop a futuristic iOS app for your target audience, then Swift should be your preferred choice. This is so because Swift iOS app development is cost-effective and requires less coding efforts as the language is intuitive, easier to learn, and comes with several advanced features and powerful tools. This modern programming language is going to survive for long due to the plethora of benefits that it offers, as compared to its old competitor, Objective-C.

Earlier, Objective-C was principally used for building iOS applications. However, it became out-dated slowly due to the lack of several useful features offered by other new-age programming languages. Apple Corp had worked on Objective-C improvements for almost 6 years and understood that a better language could be introduced for writing mobile applications. Due to such loopholes of Objective-C, Apple introduced an advanced language in 2014- Swift which had pioneering features to accelerate the iOS app development.

Swift is general-purpose, multi-paradigm, and compiled language. It is a fast, safe, and interactive language specially developed for iOS, macOS, Linux, tvOS, and watchOS. It soon superseded Objective-C and became the favorite of developers across the world. Several giants like LinkedIn, IBM, Facebook, Mozilla, Uber, etc. were already using Swift but now, even start-ups have started focussing on it.

In this blog, we will explore the key reasons why start-ups choose Swift for iOS app development instead of Objective-C.

Top Reasons why Start-ups Prefer Swift over Objective-C

Swift is quite successful today not only because it is feature-rich and well-structured, but also due to a huge support of millions of people, globally. Its independently managed conferences enhance the Swift community. Also, there are two main differences between Swift and Objective-C:

Swift isn’t a superset of C, so, it can freely make use of syntax constructs. This enables implementation of custom operators.
Swift is not dynamically typed but it is statically typed, due to which it can take benefit of a number of recent advancements in the type systems.

Let us understand in detail about what more is there for start-ups to prefer Swift over Objective-C.

Open-Source and Fast-Growing Language

Swift is the fastest-growing open-source language and has great potential. It can be immediately accessible to anyone and start-ups can take advantage of this. Also, Swift can be applied across several platforms and backend infrastructure as well since it is open-source. It is also available on Linux and efforts are being made to bring it to Windows. Swift receives feedback from the iOS app development community to make improvements to get more structured. Comparatively, Objective-C isn’t an open-source language and also becoming out-dated gradually.

Less Coding Efforts and Less Prone to Errors

Swift is a functional programming language and allows passing functions as variables. It also allows manipulation of data and text strings. This lets the Swift developers develop generic code which reduces the coding efforts to a great extent. So, writing, reading, and modifying the code is easier in Swift which ensures better readability. Also, this language has smaller code lengths due to the use of a feature called- Type interface. This feature helps to avoid incorrect coding and provides less error-prone code.

When a null optional variable is used in Swift, a run-time crash is triggered instantaneously. Due to its consistent behavior, this crash forces the bug-fixing process and so, the bugs get fixed instantly. As a result, even the development time reduces.

However, in Objective-C, complete code needs to be written every time there is a change in the code. So, it needs extensive coding and has greater execution time.

Shorter Time-to-Market

Shorter time-to-market is a critical factor for start-ups. What they want is good-quality products in less time. Of course, they need to hire dedicated iOS app developers for this. But in addition, Swift has package managers that allow the developers to focus on the logic, push their packages for collaboration with others, and use different packages for quickly assembling the applications while significantly reducing the time-to-market.

Similarly, there are many other speed-based advantages that Swift offers over Objective-C apps while developing iOS apps due to which start-ups prefer Swift.

Highly Safe and Secure

Safety and security is a very important factor while developing mobile apps. Swift has an all-inclusive Security Framework having several APIs that handle authorization services, certificates, keys, trust policies, etc. Some APIs are also used to apply cryptography encryption to the messages. Also, as discussed earlier, the use of a nil optional variable makes the bug-fixing process easier and immediate.

Syntax in Swift forces the coders to write a clean and consistent code. It not only saves time but also supports the safety of the apps, though it may feel strict sometimes. The way Swift handles the bugs ensures safer applications as compared to Objective-C.

Needs less Maintenance

Swift for iOS app development is preferred by start-ups for one more significant reason. This programming language doesn’t have any legacy code and so, needs lesser maintenance as compared to Objective-C. Unlike Swift, Objective-C depends on C for its evolution. In C, iOS app developers need to maintain and manage two separate code files- (.h) header file and (.m) implementation file, for better efficiency and building time of the app. The same legacy is carried forward by Objective-C, which can be cumbersome to manage at times. In the case of Swift, only one single file- (.swift) needs to be maintained, making the overall maintenance quite easier.

Has a Bright Future

Swift is a well-designed and well-organized programming language. It provides an enhanced development process along with some excellent features which simplify the developers’ task.

Though Swift has emerged just a couple of years ago, yet it has made a tremendous evolution. Undoubtedly, Objective-C won’t vanish from the market but it has definitely started losing ground ever since Swift came into the picture. Also, it is evident from the conferences held by Apple and its software releases that Apple is going to develop Swift with some amazing features. So, we can expect several upgrades of Swift in iOS app development in the future.

Along with the above-mentioned points, there are a few more considerations for the start-ups to choose Swift over Objective-C, as listed in the below table:

Characteristics	Swift	Objective-C
Paradigm	Object-Oriented	Class based Object Oriented
Performance	High-performance	Not fast-performing due to runtime code compilation
Complexity	Requires fewer code lines making it simpler	Coding is complex as text strings need many steps for linking different pieces of information
Community support	A fast-growing community of supporters	Loyal community for 30 years
Memory management	Supports the ARC for all APIs	Uses the ARC supported only within the Cocoa API
Long-term Outlook	Rapidly growing and has a bright future	Constant support by Apple
Dynamic libraries support	Supports dynamic libraries	Doesn’t support dynamic libraries
Readability	Clean syntax and better readability	Uses many @ symbols, semicolons, lines, etc. to insert new keywords and making it difficult to read

Key Takeaways:

Swift and Objective-C are the two most high-end Apple programming languages. However, Swift supersedes Objective-C in many ways. It is clean, expressive, and intuitive as compared to Objective-C. Also, when it comes to cost-savings, developing a Swift app for your business is the apt choice. So, in this competitive business world, it is advisable for start-ups to opt for Swift and hire Swift app developers for building powerful, immersive, and profitable iOS applications.

Technology, Page 3 Category

Angular11: Exciting New Features and Updates