Issue #27: Angular v19 Expectations

Hello friends!

We're back with another TechRel Bi-Weekly edition! Last time Sara Faatz touched upon some great and important upcoming updates across tech like .NET 9, React 19 and Angular 19.

So this week ?? Alyssa Nicoll has a special edition dedicated entirely to Angular v19! How exciting is that?! Everything you need to know about what's coming in one neat article!

Let's jump straight into it and see what Alyssa has prepped!

Hi everyone! Alyssa Nicoll here.

Expanding on the update Sara provided in the last newsletter, I thought it would be good to dive a bit deeper. So let’s talk about what is going on with Angular and what we should expect in the coming versions. ??

Release Cycles and Recent Hub-bub ??

Angular releases a major version every six months. Within those six months, there are minor releases that happen as well. For instance, last month on July 10th, Angular released 18.1. 18.1 had the very exciting local template variables (@let), that you can read about here , or check out this snippet below:

18.2 is promised to be out the week of August 12th, and v19 will be out the week of November 13th. Here is a handy chart to keep this all straight:

Lengthy Highlights ?

The Angular roadmap page in their documentation has gotten really detailed and is a lot of fun to go through. But, it can be a lot, so here are a few highlights:

• Signals (the new observable) have been growing and gaining traction. In v18, signals got the lovely addition of signal inputs. Now, the community is eagerly awaiting Signal Components. I would not be surprised if they were just in preview for version 19-20, but honestly, the Angular team has has a LOT of momentum lately, so they could be farther along than that and come out sooner than I think.

• Zoneless Angular is something big on the horizon. Many of the features developers are excited about lately are actually also steps towards zoneless. A zoneless Angular will not only be a more developer friendly angular (easier to parse, better error messages, etc) but it will also be a MUCH more performant angular, which everyone is very excited for.

• Local template variables actually made progress in a sub-version of v18 (@let mentioned above, was added under the developer preview flag). There could be more to this expansion, though, coming in future sub or major releases.

• hu-bub with Angular Material and CDK, I expect more around this (I need to check if they have made this announcement publicly yet or not), but you can read my full write-up here.
• The landscaping of testing in Angular is shifting, with a preference towards Web Test Runner (replacing Karma), more on this in v19 I expect.

OK, this is feeling bulkier than a real tl;dr, let’s change this up and just do short bullet points only.

The Real tl;dr ??

Angular DX expected in v19 or v20

• Continuation on signals (signal components)
• Zoneless angular
• Local template variables
• Signal debugging in angular devtools

Angular Material/CDK expected in v19 or v20

• Google announced Material Web Components are entering maintenance mode. Now, what does that mean for you? I wrote an article all about that, so if you want to check it out, click here.

Improved Tooling expected in v19 or v20

• Modernize unit testing tooling with ng test and web test runner
• Streamline standalone imports with Language Service

Performance Improvements expected in v19 or v20

• Partial hydration exploration and further support (SSR improvement)
• Event replay with SSR and pre-rendering
• Enabling route configuration on the server (SSR, SSG pre-rendering, or even CSR)

Down the line (most likely v20,21)

• Improved hot module reloading (HMR)
• Explore SSSR (streamed server side rendering)
• Angular CDK - support two-dimensional drag-and drop
• Evaluating nitro support in the angular CLI (SSR improvement)

Past wins (v17 & v18)

• Expand the customizability of Angular Material (v17 & v18)
• deferred loading (v17 & v18)
• Angular DevTools - iframe support (v17 & v18)
• Automation for transitioning to the new rendering engine (v17 & v18)
• New docs site - Angular.dev ?(v17 & v18)
• Built-in control flow (v17 & v18)
• New fancy getting started tutorials on the docs (v17 & v18)
• New Builder (now esbuild-based and dev server uses Vite and multi-file compilation) (v17 & v18)
• DI (dependency injection) Debugging APIs
• Better docs and schematics for standalone components
• Explore hydration and server-side rendering improvements
• Non-destructive full app hydration
• Improvements in the image directive (I did a podcast last week all about the image directive on Angular Air!)
• Migrated to ESLint
• Standalone
• Optional ngModules
• and so so much more, check out the lengthy “Completed Projects” on the roadmap!

Needless to say, I am so happy with the Angular team, the framework, and the community right now. The growth is steady and it is honestly a really fun time to be an Angular dev.

Happy coding friends!

— Alyssa

That's a wrap on this week's issue! Wow, Angular v19 has so, so much promise!

Are you an Angular user? Drop us your favorite feature in the comments!

Thanks to Alyssa for the great guide - be sure to bookmark it once those dates start rolling in.

Enjoy whatever you're doing and as Alyssa said - happy coding!

Catch you next time!

- The TechRel Team ??