16 ms·

Angular 2.0

367 points by callmevlad 13y ago

tectonic 13y ago
"All code in Angular 2 is already being written in ES6. As ES6 doesn’t run in browsers today, we’re using the Traceur compiler to generate the nice ES5 that runs everywhere. We’re working with the Traceur team to build support for a few extensions like annotations and assertions." That's pretty cool.
- josteink 13y ago
  While "cool" and "clever" and any other half-positive adjective you like, it does mean things will literally be hell to debug until native ES6 support is available in current browsers. I thought the internals of Angular already had a reputation for being pretty horrible and indecipherable already. I doubt this will improve on any of that criticism.
  - chadillac 13y ago
    That's the reason I've not done anything more than dabble with it. My experiences building anything that wasn't Angular from the foundation up left me frustrated. This is great for XYZ, but I need to do AB123C... well... shit.
  - EGreg 13y ago
    Really? Do you mean it's just super optimized and advanced, or coded badly? I kind of always assumed that famous libraries built by a team of open source geniuses would be super tight and tested for major errors and performance inefficiencies. No snark, I really did think this. Of course, Wordpress and Drupal do seem to have a lot of crazy architectural decisions that made maintenance difficult, so maybe I am just completely off. Here are two JS files from a framework that I've written myself over the past few years, for my own use. Is the angular source code pretty much like this, or much more optimized? https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Q/web/js/Q.js https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Q/we... https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Streams/web/js/Streams.js https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Stre...
    - egeozcan 13y ago
      It seems that they go as far as creating their own benchmark tool to optimize their performance[1]. They also seem to have a logging tool in the works just to expose the stuff going on under the hood[2]. [1]: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwftRCZoTFiyRzhnVml3dlRiR1A5NEVscEl0UVlXZlNIRktZ/edit https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwftRCZoTFiyRzhnVml3dlRiR1A5... [2]: https://github.com/angular/diary.js https://github.com/angular/diary.js
  - chc 13y ago
    Why does this necessarily mean things will be more hellish to debug than Angular alone?
  - ekidd 13y ago
    I write Ember applications using CoffeeScript plus ES6 module extensions, and everything gets transpiled down to JavaScript. And yet, I find it pretty easy to debug the generated code: It looks more-or-less like what I wrote, it's nicely indented, and there's just a little extra boilerplate here and there. Do you have any reason to believe that the Traceur compiler generates unreadable output with Angular?
  - haberman 13y ago
    > things will literally be hell to debug The word "literally" has officially lost all meaning.
    - xweb 13y ago
      What do you mean by 'The word "literally"'? I don't understand.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        He may mean the word no longer has a clear meaning -- it also means "figuratively". Which means it can't be relied on to have any meaning at all. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally 1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually <took the remark literally> <was literally insane> 2: in effect : virtually <will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>
        dllthomas 13y ago
        Well, in either case it is meant to strengthen.
      - skeletonjelly 13y ago
        Err..Am I missing a joke? I think they literally mean the word "literally"
        lutusp 13y ago
        That may be, but the rug has been pulled out from under "literally". One will never again be able to assert something ... literally ... and expect to be believed. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally 1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually <took the remark literally> <was literally insane> 2 : in effect : virtually <will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  On the one side, yes; on the other though, it's a shame that the technologies we use or want to use for web applications right now (HTML5, ES6, etc) are just not done, standardized or implemented yet. JS not good enough? We'll invent new languages; Dart, Typescript, Coffeescript, etc. ES6 not yet done? We'll build a transpiler so we can fiddle with it until it's done - if ever. I just wish the standardisation processes for web technologies would go faster. We get small revolutions every 2 years or so, but the standards behind them only get updated every decade.
opendomain 13y ago
Should this be marked as Angular 2.0 BETA? The docs say that it is not done yet. Also, the docs say that they do not know when they will be done. While I can understand that we may not know problem that arise, it is a pet peeve of mine that I never have a an idea when Drupal 8 will be released. I know that open source contributions are hard to track, we have to estimate (guess) when our projects will be done in our work, so why can we not do it for the projects we love?
- flylib 13y ago
  looking at the design documents probably a RC in the next 6-8 months
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Yeah this a bit is misleading, title gives the impression this is a release announcement, instead it is more of blueprint of "how we plan to do it".
- orky56 13y ago
  It's not necessarily a beta since you can't start using the half-baked product right away. It's more of a foreseen product announcement. Awkward for sure though.
- mcv 13y ago
  > Should this be marked as Angular 2.0 BETA? Not really, since it's not remotely in Beta yet. It sounds like early alpha at best.
johne20 13y ago
+1 to "Integration with authentication and authorization". This is needed on 95% of apps or more, nice to know it hopefully will be supported. oh, and don't forget better documentation :)
iSnow 13y ago
ES6 support with ES5 fallback, I am stoked. As to the mobile-first changes, we'll see - I have some reservations on using Angular on lower specced mobiles, for the $watch()-cycle seems to me huge drain on batteries. But since the Angular guys know what they are doing, I am looking forward to nothing but goodness. Why not just include restangular as one of the resource modules if they decide to go all-out modular? I am hoping for multiple ngIncludes and a bit easier development of directives, other than that, keep up the good work, guys :)
- filipedeschamps 13y ago
  Using heavy javascript computation in low performant mobiles, isn't the same as playing Playstation 4 games on a Playstation 3? You will need to go Playstation 3 native for performance, otherwise, you will not be able to do much computation.
nailer 13y ago
Would love to see Angular 2's ES6 use promote some of the 'inline async' you can do with ES6 generators.
- hcentelles 13y ago
  I really want to hear more on that from the angular team. Generators and modules are my favorite ES6 features right now.
Osiris 13y ago
I was at ng-conf back in January and there were some great presentations on a lot of these topics, such as the new DI model. I'll have to pull out my notes. It's great to see a framework team take a fundamentally new approach. Many frameworks get stuck in a mindset while other frameworks pop around them with new and more innovative approaches. Good luck to the Angular team.
Kiro 13y ago
The new DI looks confusing. The old way is super simple to understand. You inject the location provider and call it. In the new way however I don't understand what's going on at all. Where can I find a simple example?
- quest88 13y ago
  https://github.com/angular/di.js/blob/master/example/kitchen-di/fridge.js https://github.com/angular/di.js/blob/master/example/kitchen... Seems pretty simple, imo.
  - Kiro 13y ago
    I don't understand how that correlates to the current DI. How do I rewrite the following using the new DI system? function MyCtrl($http, Base64) { $http.get('http://www.example.com').success(function (data) { console.log(Base64.decode(data)); }); }
    - nateabele 13y ago
      import {Http} from 'angularjs/http'; import {Base64} from './base64'; @Inject(Http) @Inject(Base64) export class MyCtrl { constructor(Http, Base64) { Http.get('http://www.example.com').success(function (data) { console.log(Base64.decode(data)); }); } } Not too bad, right?
      - wildpeaks 13y ago
        Isn't this line missing? import {Inject} from 'di/annotations';
      - Cthulhu_ 13y ago
        I don't like it at all; the Http and Base64 imports require three tokens / lines to import, while the existing DI just needed one. RequireJS requires two (array entry, callback parameter). I'll stick to ES 5 / Angular 1.2 if we're required to write this much boilerplate to achieve the same thing.
jeswin 13y ago
AngularJS has a J2EE mindset. Where libraries grow to become as hard to learn as programming languages themselves. It does not make semantic sense to me anymore. Here is an example from the site: <div> Length (float): <input type="text" ng-model="length" name="length" smart-float /> {{length}}<br /> <span ng-show="form.length.$error.float"> This is not a valid float number!</span> </div> How semantic is ng-show="form.length.$error.float? smart-float sounds like C++. If programming languages worked like this, we wouldn't have built many apps. The problem is that some frameworks assume that everything should be done with using configuration. What ends up happening is that the configuration (and conventions) becomes its own language. This is a waste of time in the long term; library conventions are not a portable skill set. Some things are just better off with plain JS and simple HTML. FB/Instagram's React is a much better approach to building HTML UIs; you get readable JS and HTML instead of configuration mess.
- dmak 13y ago
  You know, I disagreed at first, but then I looked at React's semantics and couldn't agree more afterwards.
- eloisant 13y ago
  That's not necessarily semantic, but that's declarative and it's what I like with Angular. No need to think cinematic such as "when this change, update that", but just declare links.
- kayloos 13y ago
  This is a critique of the example, more than the framework itself. The "smart-float" directive is not a native angular directive, but rather a directive made for the example. As for the "form.length.$error.float", it probably could be a bit more concise, but is it really that bad? What would be a "more semantic" way? The main strength of angular, is that you are able to point your DOM elements to environment variables in your JavaScript code -- eliminating the need for traversing the DOM to find a mount node. If you are opposed to this functionality and insisting on traversing the DOM from the JS side, I'd love to hear why. You can find small things you dislike in any framework, but rarely are they valid criticisms of the general concept. Often, these details are there for a reason, and just as often, they are flaws waiting to be fixed by an open source developer.
tijs 13y ago
Unless they plan to release this 4-5 years from now isn't it a bit optimistic to release something intended to be used in production for IE11 only? For most real-world applications it's kind of nice to be able to support anything with a browser share over 1-2%, with this requirement it places Angular squarely in the 'startups for the tech crowd'-only world.
- eloisant 13y ago
  There are a lot of intranet applications where you know the browser you target.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  The intention is to use it with Traceur, which is an ES6->JS transpiler that works right now. It's like writing a framework in CoffeeScript or dart2js - users shouldn't care about the implementation language, the ultimate binary is just a blob of JS that works on browsers - except that the source code will eventually run natively in the browser.
  - maga 13y ago
    Just to clarify, even Traceur has a hard time supporting browsers before IE10. Though I agree that it is not an issue here.
    - MertsA 13y ago
      FYI, your last post on the Nvidia post is dead.
pavlov 13y ago
Dependency Injection -- the heroin of abstraction junkies.
- andy_ppp 13y ago
  I salute you comrade. +1.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- fiatjaf 13y ago
  Thanks for saying that.
- marknutter 13y ago
  This doesn't really add anything to the discussion. You should elaborate.
- johnny635 13y ago
  You must have never done unit tests client side.
richbradshaw 13y ago
Back last year, (May 2013) Miško said: "We're in early stages of designing Angular 2.0, but some of our goals are: - Angular will use the underlying web platform features available to it (e.g. Node.bind, template integration, Custom Elements, etc...) - Web Components (Polymer, Ember, or any other framework/library) will work seamlessly within Angular apps and directives. - Components written in Angular will export to Web Components (to be used by Polymer, Ember, or any other framework/library) . We're working actively with the MDV, Web Components, and Polymer teams to make sure that our approaches remain compatible as all these projects evolve (and they will still evolve). -- Misko & the Angular team" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/polymer-dev/4RSYaKmbtEk/uYnY3900wpIJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/polymer-dev/4RSYaKmbtE...) Does anyone know if the focus on Web Components is still there?
- gravity13 13y ago
  First thing I looked for myself, this doc is titled "Polymer Notes" https://docs.google.com/document/d/16O2Im1ekfdJ4FU8FBbVRYGjqsXjmcV3tYFg1vyfhYC8/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/16O2Im1ekfdJ4FU8FBbVRYGjq... - sounds like team Angular and team Polymer aren't exactly on the same page quite yet.
ap22213 13y ago
All I really need are client-side templates and awesome DOM binding. What's the current best options?
- dlsym 13y ago
  AngularJS.
- prottmann 13y ago
  http://www.ractivejs.org/ http://www.ractivejs.org/
  - egeozcan 13y ago
    Ractive is my favorite. The community is not there though.
- awinder 13y ago
  http://knockoutjs.com http://knockoutjs.com is probably a good contender as something primarily focused on templates and data bindings without much else.
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  Backbone.JS, it's exceptionally bare bones, but hey it's YOUR code. You don't have to memorize an entire framework like Angular. Pick up a Backbone book and in two weeks your dangerous enough to use it. A month, you're in the groove. 6 months: Angul-who?
  - slimshady 13y ago
    Amen....
  - GazNewt 13y ago
    Exactly.
  - mushishi 13y ago
    If you are going to use Backbone for the first time in a big project, beware that you don't end up with low-level code that is duplicated in different flavours all over the place. When you have implemented features enough to notice that it takes too many steps to make new views that resemble old ones, ease off from feature building, and make proper custom abstractions suitable for that particular project. Also check out Backbone extension: Marionette for modularizing and backbone-documentmodel for non-linear forms.
CmonDev 13y ago
The actual important stuff: "Simplify the directive API Integrate with other component frameworks using web standards Improve performance Allow tools like IDEs to analyze and validate templates"
ajanuary 13y ago
OT if you're going to insist on double spacing HTML, use "&nbps; " and not "  " otherwise you'll have a ragged left margin like the OP.
kristiandupont 13y ago
I have multiple friends who are very excited about Angular and one who is very excited about Knockout, so I am convinced that they are getting something right. I am personally much more attracted to the reactive style of Meteor's Blaze or ReactJS. It seems much easier for me to reason about, but maybe this has something to do with my background in video games which means that a render-loop seems really natural to me. I don't have enough real world experience with the former to make a comparison so I'd love to hear from someone who is able to properly compare the two styles what the real pros and cons are.
- davedx 13y ago
  I've worked on one large project with Angular, and a couple of medium sized ones in Meteor (using the original UI system) and am working on a POC project with ReactJS at the moment. I think Angular is better for "slightly more traditional" webapps such as dashboards. Its directives are nice for building small custom widgets, and the thin model wrappers $http and $resource can be useful (though I'm looking forward to what they add to these in v2.0). Data-binding is very straightforward and easy to understand. I've built a couple of projects in Meteor, and I'm still a fan, though I've yet to have a real use case for the realtime (pub/sub) stuff: I'm still making straightforward webapps that would probably be just as easy (if not easier) to build in Angular or Backbone. The reason I'm using Meteor is more for productivity than for reactive realtime: I love that I get Mongo, a watched asset pipeline and a bunch of other stuff for free. I love being able to share/move code around easily between the client and server. Sometimes the reactivity in Meteor can be quite subtle and difficult to get your head around, and I wish I was just using straightforward webservices instead; other times it's a productivity booster and keeps things simpler. ReactJS is a really nice concise view library, with some extra stuff that Facebook put in that I'm not sure should really be in there (e.g. the synthetic events) and should maybe be a module instead (an approach I'm very happy to see Angular taking). ReactJS does for views and templates what Meteor does for client-server. It's also got its share of subtleties and gotchas though. I'm also from a video games background and am also tending to favour Meteor and ReactJS. But I do think the extra power of these technologies brings an extra set of complexity and things to watch out for. But then Angular has transclusions, so......
jbeja 13y ago
I will stick with jqueRy for now, i don't need this yet.
thoradam 13y ago
They mention annotations, presumably type annotations? Is that actually a part of ES6? I can't find any mention of it.
uptown 13y ago
I realize this is a basic question, but how does synchronization between the client and server work with Angular? I understand the concept of data-binding once you've retrieved the data to a data-structure on the client-side, thus causing that data to update the view in the DOM, but what triggers a client-side update when your server-side data changes? Do you need to poll a REST service to check for changes? Does the server push the change to the client side? Say there's no client-action triggering an update? What causes the new server-data to get pushed to the client?
- candybar 13y ago
  AngularJS is not a server-side framework and therefore it is agnostic on that question. You can do it however you like and you can even create directives that keep the client model synchronized with server-side, but it doesn't come out of the box.
  - uptown 13y ago
    So if you want to poll a service periodically, you can do that ... or if you want to use a websocket and just leave a pipe open to refresh your client-side model ... you can do that too? Got it. Thanks.
    - yoshokatana 13y ago
      Yep. The $http service in angular core basically does your standard Http stuff (with some nifty additions like caching and promises), but people have built services to do sockets, sails, handle server-side events, etc.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    You should actually use a service to keep data synchronized.
anton-107 13y ago
> Dependency Injection is still a key differentiator between Angular and other client side frameworks Why not just take Require.JS and use it as a dependency injector, like any other client-side frameworks allow you to do? IMO Angular is trying too hard to be everything, while it is now de facto a template system with an excellent support of custom directives and two-way data-binding. For example, Angular could be a good choice for a View layer of an app built on top of Backbone, since it moves away from opinionating the View layer. But it's just too much fuss happening around this templating system in Angular.
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  Require.JS is a service locator. It's not an inversion of control dependency injector. You can swap in a different service locator for your tests, but it's messier than just directly passing in different dependencies for your tests.
  - anton-107 13y ago
    Well yes, Require.JS is not strictly speaking a dependency injector (however you can use it as one), but underlying AMD pattern is a very good example of IoC. And this allows all kinds of interesting stuff to do with your codebase - for example, use Require.JS for development, simplified module loader for production and, if Require.js configs become messy in your specific project, you can just load a module for your tests purposes directly, passing all of it's dependencies manually. I don't see what exactly Angular's dependency management adds to this.
  - camus2 13y ago
    RequireJS is not a service locator,it's a module loader. It doesnt instanciate anything.AngularJS DI IS a service locator, not a dependency injection container.
    - lern_too_spel 13y ago
      You're confused. A service locator doesn't have to instantiate anything. Angular's injector, like Guice's injector is a service locator. Because the normal way to use AngularJS is to simply list your dependencies instead of requesting what you want from an injector instance, it is an IOC DI framework.
jimktrains2 13y ago
An yet another simple text blog that is 100%, completely, utterly broken an useless without JavaScript enable. There isn't even any compelling feature. Besides the sliding out mention there is _no_ reason JavaScript even needs to be on this page. I don't get why BlogSpot an so many other sites require javascript to o absolutely nothing of value just to see the site. It's maddening and appalling.
- mantrax2 13y ago
  It's maddening and appalling to you because you deliberately disabled an essential part of the web platform on your browser. Your problem, not theirs.
  - jimktrains2 13y ago
    What about the blind who use screen readers or braille displays? Why should the page become so bloated that I can't read simple text simply?
    - thatsar_ 13y ago
      I don't have first-hand experience, but my impression is that modern screen readers shouldn't have too much trouble with simple JavaScript like this. Could anybody with experience confirm/deny?
      - TheHegemon 13y ago
        According to a recent podcast I listened to[1] about a blind Software user, it seemed like there is a lot of issues with the current generation of Screen Readers. This includes issues with JS. 1.http://hanselminutes.com/413/im-a-blind-software-technician-ask-me-anything-with-katherine-moss http://hanselminutes.com/413/im-a-blind-software-technician-...
    - mendelk 13y ago
      This is not an endorsement (or not) for blogs that rely on JS, but apparently 98.6% of screenreader users have javascript enabled.[0] [0] http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/ http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/
kclay 13y ago
The new DI system looks promising, looks like they are trying to make a JS version of Guice which I love in java. The whole thing of using annotations in javascript seems a bit out of place though especially when ide/text don't support them. Also the logging framework, seems they are making sure that they cover some "enterprise" concerns.
beefydude 13y ago
The focus on mobile web development is key here.
- orky56 13y ago
  That's what bothers me. AngularJS is not going to be a big enough step (time will tell) for native apps to suddenly disappear and for everyone to go web app. They should have continued focus on a desktop-first approach since that's where they can really shine. What I see here with this announcement is that they are optimizing for the limited resources of the mobile device rather than the more powerful applications and usage patterns that we see on desktops.
johnny635 13y ago
They are getting rid of the config phase!!!
kmkemp 13y ago
It's pretty bizarre that people keep saying AngularJS is "large and monolithic" when it, in fact, is modular.
orandolabs 13y ago
Unfortunately, Angular 2.0 sounds like a project killer. Let's abandon the huge effort put in by the community, and build this shiny new framework with all the latest and greatest (and currently unsupported) tools. Let's support everything we can possibly foresee, and make the ultimate framework that will never need improvement. That is until Angular 3.0, when we'll need to support ES8... Rewriting a successful framework with no backward support is suicide. Please read this link before continuing on this path: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html. Another informative example is Perl 6. The 'rewrite' killed Perl. Microsoft also did this time after time, forcing developers to constantly rewrite their applications instead of spending time writing new products. Even Python 3, with it's limited incompatibilities, had a very negative effect on the community: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63859/why-do-people-hesitate-to-use-python-3 https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63859/why-do.... Why should I bother supporting Angular 2.0, since 2 years from now the developers are going to get bored and want Angular 3.0? The community is NOT going to take the time to rewrite all their code to scratch your itch. My time is very limited, and I need to be selective where I use it. I love Angular, but there is zero chance I will rewrite any of my code for Angular 2.0. It's not going to happen. I'm quite certain that my sentiments are shared by other developers who have put in far more time and effort than I have. My strong advice is to fix and optimize what you have. If there are areas that need rewriting or rearchitecting, then do it, but leave a clear upgrade path and don't break existing apps where possible. Sorry, but that's how software works. You have a ground breaking, beautifully designed framework. Please don't destroy it because it's not perfect. Nothing is. Can someone at Google please talk some sense into the developers running this project?

367 points by callmevlad 13y ago

"All code in Angular 2 is already being written in ES6. As ES6 doesn’t run in browsers today, we’re using the Traceur compiler to generate the nice ES5 that runs everywhere. We’re working with the Traceur team to build support for a few extensions like annotations and assertions." That's pretty cool.

josteink 13y ago
While "cool" and "clever" and any other half-positive adjective you like, it does mean things will literally be hell to debug until native ES6 support is available in current browsers. I thought the internals of Angular already had a reputation for being pretty horrible and indecipherable already. I doubt this will improve on any of that criticism.
- chadillac 13y ago
  That's the reason I've not done anything more than dabble with it. My experiences building anything that wasn't Angular from the foundation up left me frustrated. This is great for XYZ, but I need to do AB123C... well... shit.
- EGreg 13y ago
  Really? Do you mean it's just super optimized and advanced, or coded badly? I kind of always assumed that famous libraries built by a team of open source geniuses would be super tight and tested for major errors and performance inefficiencies. No snark, I really did think this. Of course, Wordpress and Drupal do seem to have a lot of crazy architectural decisions that made maintenance difficult, so maybe I am just completely off. Here are two JS files from a framework that I've written myself over the past few years, for my own use. Is the angular source code pretty much like this, or much more optimized? https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Q/web/js/Q.js https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Q/we... https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Streams/web/js/Streams.js https://github.com/EGreg/Q/blob/master/platform/plugins/Stre...
  - egeozcan 13y ago
    It seems that they go as far as creating their own benchmark tool to optimize their performance[1]. They also seem to have a logging tool in the works just to expose the stuff going on under the hood[2]. [1]: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwftRCZoTFiyRzhnVml3dlRiR1A5NEVscEl0UVlXZlNIRktZ/edit https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwftRCZoTFiyRzhnVml3dlRiR1A5... [2]: https://github.com/angular/diary.js https://github.com/angular/diary.js
- chc 13y ago
  Why does this necessarily mean things will be more hellish to debug than Angular alone?
- ekidd 13y ago
  I write Ember applications using CoffeeScript plus ES6 module extensions, and everything gets transpiled down to JavaScript. And yet, I find it pretty easy to debug the generated code: It looks more-or-less like what I wrote, it's nicely indented, and there's just a little extra boilerplate here and there. Do you have any reason to believe that the Traceur compiler generates unreadable output with Angular?
- haberman 13y ago
  > things will literally be hell to debug The word "literally" has officially lost all meaning.
  - xweb 13y ago
    What do you mean by 'The word "literally"'? I don't understand.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      He may mean the word no longer has a clear meaning -- it also means "figuratively". Which means it can't be relied on to have any meaning at all. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally 1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually <took the remark literally> <was literally insane> 2: in effect : virtually <will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Well, in either case it is meant to strengthen.
    - skeletonjelly 13y ago
      Err..Am I missing a joke? I think they literally mean the word "literally"
      - lutusp 13y ago
        That may be, but the rug has been pulled out from under "literally". One will never again be able to assert something ... literally ... and expect to be believed. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally 1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually <took the remark literally> <was literally insane> 2 : in effect : virtually <will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
On the one side, yes; on the other though, it's a shame that the technologies we use or want to use for web applications right now (HTML5, ES6, etc) are just not done, standardized or implemented yet. JS not good enough? We'll invent new languages; Dart, Typescript, Coffeescript, etc. ES6 not yet done? We'll build a transpiler so we can fiddle with it until it's done - if ever. I just wish the standardisation processes for web technologies would go faster. We get small revolutions every 2 years or so, but the standards behind them only get updated every decade.

opendomain 13y ago

Should this be marked as Angular 2.0 BETA? The docs say that it is not done yet. Also, the docs say that they do not know when they will be done. While I can understand that we may not know problem that arise, it is a pet peeve of mine that I never have a an idea when Drupal 8 will be released. I know that open source contributions are hard to track, we have to estimate (guess) when our projects will be done in our work, so why can we not do it for the projects we love?

flylib 13y ago
looking at the design documents probably a RC in the next 6-8 months
rdtsc 13y ago
Yeah this a bit is misleading, title gives the impression this is a release announcement, instead it is more of blueprint of "how we plan to do it".
orky56 13y ago
It's not necessarily a beta since you can't start using the half-baked product right away. It's more of a foreseen product announcement. Awkward for sure though.
mcv 13y ago
> Should this be marked as Angular 2.0 BETA? Not really, since it's not remotely in Beta yet. It sounds like early alpha at best.

johne20 13y ago

+1 to "Integration with authentication and authorization". This is needed on 95% of apps or more, nice to know it hopefully will be supported. oh, and don't forget better documentation :)

iSnow 13y ago

ES6 support with ES5 fallback, I am stoked. As to the mobile-first changes, we'll see - I have some reservations on using Angular on lower specced mobiles, for the $watch()-cycle seems to me huge drain on batteries. But since the Angular guys know what they are doing, I am looking forward to nothing but goodness. Why not just include restangular as one of the resource modules if they decide to go all-out modular? I am hoping for multiple ngIncludes and a bit easier development of directives, other than that, keep up the good work, guys :)

filipedeschamps 13y ago
Using heavy javascript computation in low performant mobiles, isn't the same as playing Playstation 4 games on a Playstation 3? You will need to go Playstation 3 native for performance, otherwise, you will not be able to do much computation.

nailer 13y ago

Would love to see Angular 2's ES6 use promote some of the 'inline async' you can do with ES6 generators.

hcentelles 13y ago
I really want to hear more on that from the angular team. Generators and modules are my favorite ES6 features right now.

Osiris 13y ago

I was at ng-conf back in January and there were some great presentations on a lot of these topics, such as the new DI model. I'll have to pull out my notes. It's great to see a framework team take a fundamentally new approach. Many frameworks get stuck in a mindset while other frameworks pop around them with new and more innovative approaches. Good luck to the Angular team.

Kiro 13y ago

The new DI looks confusing. The old way is super simple to understand. You inject the location provider and call it. In the new way however I don't understand what's going on at all. Where can I find a simple example?

quest88 13y ago
https://github.com/angular/di.js/blob/master/example/kitchen-di/fridge.js https://github.com/angular/di.js/blob/master/example/kitchen... Seems pretty simple, imo.
- Kiro 13y ago
  I don't understand how that correlates to the current DI. How do I rewrite the following using the new DI system? function MyCtrl($http, Base64) { $http.get('http://www.example.com').success(function (data) { console.log(Base64.decode(data)); }); }
  - nateabele 13y ago
    import {Http} from 'angularjs/http'; import {Base64} from './base64'; @Inject(Http) @Inject(Base64) export class MyCtrl { constructor(Http, Base64) { Http.get('http://www.example.com').success(function (data) { console.log(Base64.decode(data)); }); } } Not too bad, right?
    - wildpeaks 13y ago
      Isn't this line missing? import {Inject} from 'di/annotations';
    - Cthulhu_ 13y ago
      I don't like it at all; the Http and Base64 imports require three tokens / lines to import, while the existing DI just needed one. RequireJS requires two (array entry, callback parameter). I'll stick to ES 5 / Angular 1.2 if we're required to write this much boilerplate to achieve the same thing.

jeswin 13y ago

AngularJS has a J2EE mindset. Where libraries grow to become as hard to learn as programming languages themselves. It does not make semantic sense to me anymore. Here is an example from the site: <div> Length (float): <input type="text" ng-model="length" name="length" smart-float /> {{length}}<br /> <span ng-show="form.length.$error.float"> This is not a valid float number!</span> </div> How semantic is ng-show="form.length.$error.float? smart-float sounds like C++. If programming languages worked like this, we wouldn't have built many apps. The problem is that some frameworks assume that everything should be done with using configuration. What ends up happening is that the configuration (and conventions) becomes its own language. This is a waste of time in the long term; library conventions are not a portable skill set. Some things are just better off with plain JS and simple HTML. FB/Instagram's React is a much better approach to building HTML UIs; you get readable JS and HTML instead of configuration mess.

dmak 13y ago
You know, I disagreed at first, but then I looked at React's semantics and couldn't agree more afterwards.
eloisant 13y ago
That's not necessarily semantic, but that's declarative and it's what I like with Angular. No need to think cinematic such as "when this change, update that", but just declare links.
kayloos 13y ago
This is a critique of the example, more than the framework itself. The "smart-float" directive is not a native angular directive, but rather a directive made for the example. As for the "form.length.$error.float", it probably could be a bit more concise, but is it really that bad? What would be a "more semantic" way? The main strength of angular, is that you are able to point your DOM elements to environment variables in your JavaScript code -- eliminating the need for traversing the DOM to find a mount node. If you are opposed to this functionality and insisting on traversing the DOM from the JS side, I'd love to hear why. You can find small things you dislike in any framework, but rarely are they valid criticisms of the general concept. Often, these details are there for a reason, and just as often, they are flaws waiting to be fixed by an open source developer.

tijs 13y ago

Unless they plan to release this 4-5 years from now isn't it a bit optimistic to release something intended to be used in production for IE11 only? For most real-world applications it's kind of nice to be able to support anything with a browser share over 1-2%, with this requirement it places Angular squarely in the 'startups for the tech crowd'-only world.

eloisant 13y ago
There are a lot of intranet applications where you know the browser you target.
nostrademons 13y ago
The intention is to use it with Traceur, which is an ES6->JS transpiler that works right now. It's like writing a framework in CoffeeScript or dart2js - users shouldn't care about the implementation language, the ultimate binary is just a blob of JS that works on browsers - except that the source code will eventually run natively in the browser.
- maga 13y ago
  Just to clarify, even Traceur has a hard time supporting browsers before IE10. Though I agree that it is not an issue here.
  - MertsA 13y ago
    FYI, your last post on the Nvidia post is dead.

pavlov 13y ago

Dependency Injection -- the heroin of abstraction junkies.

andy_ppp 13y ago
I salute you comrade. +1.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fiatjaf 13y ago
Thanks for saying that.
marknutter 13y ago
This doesn't really add anything to the discussion. You should elaborate.
johnny635 13y ago
You must have never done unit tests client side.

richbradshaw 13y ago

Back last year, (May 2013) Miško said: "We're in early stages of designing Angular 2.0, but some of our goals are: - Angular will use the underlying web platform features available to it (e.g. Node.bind, template integration, Custom Elements, etc...) - Web Components (Polymer, Ember, or any other framework/library) will work seamlessly within Angular apps and directives. - Components written in Angular will export to Web Components (to be used by Polymer, Ember, or any other framework/library) . We're working actively with the MDV, Web Components, and Polymer teams to make sure that our approaches remain compatible as all these projects evolve (and they will still evolve). -- Misko & the Angular team" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/polymer-dev/4RSYaKmbtEk/uYnY3900wpIJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/polymer-dev/4RSYaKmbtE...) Does anyone know if the focus on Web Components is still there?

gravity13 13y ago
First thing I looked for myself, this doc is titled "Polymer Notes" https://docs.google.com/document/d/16O2Im1ekfdJ4FU8FBbVRYGjqsXjmcV3tYFg1vyfhYC8/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/16O2Im1ekfdJ4FU8FBbVRYGjq... - sounds like team Angular and team Polymer aren't exactly on the same page quite yet.

ap22213 13y ago

All I really need are client-side templates and awesome DOM binding. What's the current best options?

dlsym 13y ago
AngularJS.
prottmann 13y ago
http://www.ractivejs.org/ http://www.ractivejs.org/
- egeozcan 13y ago
  Ractive is my favorite. The community is not there though.
awinder 13y ago
http://knockoutjs.com http://knockoutjs.com is probably a good contender as something primarily focused on templates and data bindings without much else.
sergiotapia 13y ago
Backbone.JS, it's exceptionally bare bones, but hey it's YOUR code. You don't have to memorize an entire framework like Angular. Pick up a Backbone book and in two weeks your dangerous enough to use it. A month, you're in the groove. 6 months: Angul-who?
- slimshady 13y ago
  Amen....
- GazNewt 13y ago
  Exactly.
- mushishi 13y ago
  If you are going to use Backbone for the first time in a big project, beware that you don't end up with low-level code that is duplicated in different flavours all over the place. When you have implemented features enough to notice that it takes too many steps to make new views that resemble old ones, ease off from feature building, and make proper custom abstractions suitable for that particular project. Also check out Backbone extension: Marionette for modularizing and backbone-documentmodel for non-linear forms.

CmonDev 13y ago

The actual important stuff: "Simplify the directive API Integrate with other component frameworks using web standards Improve performance Allow tools like IDEs to analyze and validate templates"

ajanuary 13y ago

OT if you're going to insist on double spacing HTML, use "&nbps; " and not "  " otherwise you'll have a ragged left margin like the OP.

kristiandupont 13y ago

I have multiple friends who are very excited about Angular and one who is very excited about Knockout, so I am convinced that they are getting something right. I am personally much more attracted to the reactive style of Meteor's Blaze or ReactJS. It seems much easier for me to reason about, but maybe this has something to do with my background in video games which means that a render-loop seems really natural to me. I don't have enough real world experience with the former to make a comparison so I'd love to hear from someone who is able to properly compare the two styles what the real pros and cons are.

davedx 13y ago
I've worked on one large project with Angular, and a couple of medium sized ones in Meteor (using the original UI system) and am working on a POC project with ReactJS at the moment. I think Angular is better for "slightly more traditional" webapps such as dashboards. Its directives are nice for building small custom widgets, and the thin model wrappers $http and $resource can be useful (though I'm looking forward to what they add to these in v2.0). Data-binding is very straightforward and easy to understand. I've built a couple of projects in Meteor, and I'm still a fan, though I've yet to have a real use case for the realtime (pub/sub) stuff: I'm still making straightforward webapps that would probably be just as easy (if not easier) to build in Angular or Backbone. The reason I'm using Meteor is more for productivity than for reactive realtime: I love that I get Mongo, a watched asset pipeline and a bunch of other stuff for free. I love being able to share/move code around easily between the client and server. Sometimes the reactivity in Meteor can be quite subtle and difficult to get your head around, and I wish I was just using straightforward webservices instead; other times it's a productivity booster and keeps things simpler. ReactJS is a really nice concise view library, with some extra stuff that Facebook put in that I'm not sure should really be in there (e.g. the synthetic events) and should maybe be a module instead (an approach I'm very happy to see Angular taking). ReactJS does for views and templates what Meteor does for client-server. It's also got its share of subtleties and gotchas though. I'm also from a video games background and am also tending to favour Meteor and ReactJS. But I do think the extra power of these technologies brings an extra set of complexity and things to watch out for. But then Angular has transclusions, so......

jbeja 13y ago

I will stick with jqueRy for now, i don't need this yet.

thoradam 13y ago

They mention annotations, presumably type annotations? Is that actually a part of ES6? I can't find any mention of it.

uptown 13y ago

I realize this is a basic question, but how does synchronization between the client and server work with Angular? I understand the concept of data-binding once you've retrieved the data to a data-structure on the client-side, thus causing that data to update the view in the DOM, but what triggers a client-side update when your server-side data changes? Do you need to poll a REST service to check for changes? Does the server push the change to the client side? Say there's no client-action triggering an update? What causes the new server-data to get pushed to the client?

candybar 13y ago
AngularJS is not a server-side framework and therefore it is agnostic on that question. You can do it however you like and you can even create directives that keep the client model synchronized with server-side, but it doesn't come out of the box.
- uptown 13y ago
  So if you want to poll a service periodically, you can do that ... or if you want to use a websocket and just leave a pipe open to refresh your client-side model ... you can do that too? Got it. Thanks.
  - yoshokatana 13y ago
    Yep. The $http service in angular core basically does your standard Http stuff (with some nifty additions like caching and promises), but people have built services to do sockets, sails, handle server-side events, etc.
- nawitus 13y ago
  You should actually use a service to keep data synchronized.

anton-107 13y ago

> Dependency Injection is still a key differentiator between Angular and other client side frameworks Why not just take Require.JS and use it as a dependency injector, like any other client-side frameworks allow you to do? IMO Angular is trying too hard to be everything, while it is now de facto a template system with an excellent support of custom directives and two-way data-binding. For example, Angular could be a good choice for a View layer of an app built on top of Backbone, since it moves away from opinionating the View layer. But it's just too much fuss happening around this templating system in Angular.

lern_too_spel 13y ago
Require.JS is a service locator. It's not an inversion of control dependency injector. You can swap in a different service locator for your tests, but it's messier than just directly passing in different dependencies for your tests.
- anton-107 13y ago
  Well yes, Require.JS is not strictly speaking a dependency injector (however you can use it as one), but underlying AMD pattern is a very good example of IoC. And this allows all kinds of interesting stuff to do with your codebase - for example, use Require.JS for development, simplified module loader for production and, if Require.js configs become messy in your specific project, you can just load a module for your tests purposes directly, passing all of it's dependencies manually. I don't see what exactly Angular's dependency management adds to this.
- camus2 13y ago
  RequireJS is not a service locator,it's a module loader. It doesnt instanciate anything.AngularJS DI IS a service locator, not a dependency injection container.
  - lern_too_spel 13y ago
    You're confused. A service locator doesn't have to instantiate anything. Angular's injector, like Guice's injector is a service locator. Because the normal way to use AngularJS is to simply list your dependencies instead of requesting what you want from an injector instance, it is an IOC DI framework.

jimktrains2 13y ago

An yet another simple text blog that is 100%, completely, utterly broken an useless without JavaScript enable. There isn't even any compelling feature. Besides the sliding out mention there is _no_ reason JavaScript even needs to be on this page. I don't get why BlogSpot an so many other sites require javascript to o absolutely nothing of value just to see the site. It's maddening and appalling.

mantrax2 13y ago
It's maddening and appalling to you because you deliberately disabled an essential part of the web platform on your browser. Your problem, not theirs.
- jimktrains2 13y ago
  What about the blind who use screen readers or braille displays? Why should the page become so bloated that I can't read simple text simply?
  - thatsar_ 13y ago
    I don't have first-hand experience, but my impression is that modern screen readers shouldn't have too much trouble with simple JavaScript like this. Could anybody with experience confirm/deny?
    - TheHegemon 13y ago
      According to a recent podcast I listened to[1] about a blind Software user, it seemed like there is a lot of issues with the current generation of Screen Readers. This includes issues with JS. 1.http://hanselminutes.com/413/im-a-blind-software-technician-ask-me-anything-with-katherine-moss http://hanselminutes.com/413/im-a-blind-software-technician-...
  - mendelk 13y ago
    This is not an endorsement (or not) for blogs that rely on JS, but apparently 98.6% of screenreader users have javascript enabled.[0] [0] http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/ http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/

kclay 13y ago

The new DI system looks promising, looks like they are trying to make a JS version of Guice which I love in java. The whole thing of using annotations in javascript seems a bit out of place though especially when ide/text don't support them. Also the logging framework, seems they are making sure that they cover some "enterprise" concerns.

beefydude 13y ago

The focus on mobile web development is key here.

orky56 13y ago
That's what bothers me. AngularJS is not going to be a big enough step (time will tell) for native apps to suddenly disappear and for everyone to go web app. They should have continued focus on a desktop-first approach since that's where they can really shine. What I see here with this announcement is that they are optimizing for the limited resources of the mobile device rather than the more powerful applications and usage patterns that we see on desktops.

johnny635 13y ago

They are getting rid of the config phase!!!

kmkemp 13y ago

It's pretty bizarre that people keep saying AngularJS is "large and monolithic" when it, in fact, is modular.

orandolabs 13y ago

Unfortunately, Angular 2.0 sounds like a project killer. Let's abandon the huge effort put in by the community, and build this shiny new framework with all the latest and greatest (and currently unsupported) tools. Let's support everything we can possibly foresee, and make the ultimate framework that will never need improvement. That is until Angular 3.0, when we'll need to support ES8... Rewriting a successful framework with no backward support is suicide. Please read this link before continuing on this path: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html. Another informative example is Perl 6. The 'rewrite' killed Perl. Microsoft also did this time after time, forcing developers to constantly rewrite their applications instead of spending time writing new products. Even Python 3, with it's limited incompatibilities, had a very negative effect on the community: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63859/why-do-people-hesitate-to-use-python-3 https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63859/why-do.... Why should I bother supporting Angular 2.0, since 2 years from now the developers are going to get bored and want Angular 3.0? The community is NOT going to take the time to rewrite all their code to scratch your itch. My time is very limited, and I need to be selective where I use it. I love Angular, but there is zero chance I will rewrite any of my code for Angular 2.0. It's not going to happen. I'm quite certain that my sentiments are shared by other developers who have put in far more time and effort than I have. My strong advice is to fix and optimize what you have. If there are areas that need rewriting or rearchitecting, then do it, but leave a clear upgrade path and don't break existing apps where possible. Sorry, but that's how software works. You have a ground breaking, beautifully designed framework. Please don't destroy it because it's not perfect. Nothing is. Can someone at Google please talk some sense into the developers running this project?