Angular 7 - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of the latest release

by Indraneel Pole

So Angular's new release is already here, for people like me who are working on the long running Angular projects it might feel that Angular versions are getting released really fast, but for a web framework, this speed seems normal.

I took a quick look last night after it's release, and here is a quick the good, the bad, and the ugly report of new version of Angular - Angular 7

1. Application Performance - Angular 7 comes with better application performance thanks to new tweaks in pollyfills.ts file.

With version 7, now you can also use bundle budget with CLI by setting the bundle size limit. By default you get warning at 2MB, and Error at 5MB. This can be change in angular.json this way -

"budgets": [{
  "type": "initial",
  "maximumWarning": "6mb",
  "maximumError": "10mb"
}]

2. Virtual Scroll, Drag and Drop via Material and CDK - Material has already received a big update in 2018. With version 7, you get some new additional features such as drag and drop and virtual scroll.

3. Documentation Updates - Honestly, as a developer who is using Angular since the time of AngularJS, I hate Angular documentation. This is because it is confusing, frustrating to find, and extremely basic at times. Thankfully, it is improving with every update. With Angular 7 as well, you get improved developer guide and reference material for Angular CLI.

4. Dependency Updates - Also, the dependecy updates come as expected on the following libraries -

TypeScript 3.1

RxJS 6.3

Node 10 along with on going support for Node 8

5. Angular CLI Prompts - This one is my most favorite one. I love Angular CLI. It is a major help for faster developement. However, without prompts, the learning curve is a little bit steeper. But thanks to update, now you can see the CLI prompts. Yaay.

Update to latest version

This is always the pain. But to be up to date, you have to do it, no matter what. update.angular.io provides better documentation on this. However, if you are already on version 6, following commands should be enough for you -

ng update @angular/cli @angular/core

So that's all for now.

Happy coding!