Chapter 1. Introducing Angular
This chapter covers
- A high-level overview of the Angular framework
- Generating a new project with Angular CLI
- Getting started with Angular modules and components
- Introducing the sample application ngAuction
Angular is an open source JavaScript framework maintained by Google. It’s a complete rewrite of its popular predecessor, AngularJS. The first version of Angular was released in September 2016 under the name Angular 2. Shortly after, the digit 2 was removed from the name, and now it’s just Angular. Twice a year, the Angular team make major releases of this framework. Future releases will include new features, perform better, and generate smaller code bundles, but the architecture of the framework most likely will remain the same.
Angular applications can be developed in JavaScript (using the syntax of ECMAScript 5 or later versions) or TypeScript. In this book, we use TypeScript; we explain our reasons for this in appendix B.
Note
In this book, we expect you to know the syntax of JavaScript and HTML and to understand what web applications consist of. We also assume that you know what CSS is. If you’re not familiar with the syntax of TypeScript and the latest versions of ECMAScript, we suggest you read appendixes A and B first, and then continue reading from this chapter on. If you’re new to developing using Node.js tooling, read appendix C.