14 DAY TRIAL // With the deadline of AngularJS 2.x getting closer and closer, more details are being released of what the new version of this famous JavaScript framework will look like.
The most recent updates were released at the Angular U conference in San Francisco, where two key members of Google's AngularJS team have provided some news and demos showcasing the upcoming AngularJS 2.0 core.
Three main goals: performance, mobile, and server-side support
First there was Brad Green, engineering director at Google in charge of the AngularJS project, which presented a suite of benchmarks that showcased how AngularJS 2.x is around two times faster than Angular 1.x, and three times more efficient in memory usage.
Following him was Igor Minar, who presented one of the team's experiments with the AngularJS 2.x codebase, where they split the rendering engine from the framework's core, which then allowed them to improve performance by running the core on a Web Worker and leaving all the UI-related code in the browser's main processing thread.
Also by splitting the rendering engine off the Angular core, the team also addressed the possibility of integrating Angular with any other rendering engine when targeting specific devices (like mobiles).
React Native and NativeScript will help AngularJS become a power-player in mobile development
This is where the meetings that took place the past few months between the Angular team, Telerik and Facebook really helped, the upcoming Angular version coming with support for NativeScript and React Native.
These two technologies provide a way to write JavaScript applications and then convert them to native code, and now Angular will allow developers to write applications on top of its core, and then plug NativeScript or React Native and use it to replace its default rendering engine, targeting native iOS and Android devices.
"We've seen a major update in the mobile Web, and in mobile applications in general. [...] Angular 2 has this aspiration to be a great platform for building mobile applications," said Mr. Minar.
Server-side rendering should solve many SEO-related problems
Last but not least was the issue of server-side rendering, which developers have been requesting since the early versions of Angular 1.x.
Having the ability to prepare the UI on the server and then sending it to the client will fix issues Web developers have with search engine optimization and page preview services, but also improve the speed at which applications are assembled and delivered to users.
So in conclusion, AngularJS 2.0 will focus on parallelization with Web Workers for increased smoothness, on mobile applications with NativeScript and React Native integration, and on speed with server-side rendering support.
The Angular U conference presentation is available online, if you have 80 minutes of your time to spare.
I'm digging preboot with Angular 2. Amazing stuff from @jeffwhelpley and @gdi2290 #angularu pic.twitter.com/V5F06P5u5U
— David East (@_davideast) June 23, 2015