We spent a fair amount of time in our previous article explaining the value of studying this framework and we also spoke about how many businesses have this structure in their demand when it comes to recruiting software engineers.
Angular app development has recently proven to be a trusted option for organizations looking to deploy web and hybrid applications that are efficient and easy to use. We spoke about some of the pros and cons of using Angular for your projects and why you should use it. Angular is a framework that Google offers which has several major advantages and few disadvantages in the software industry.
Something important to mention that with this framework you can build a single website or multiple webpages, it can also be used to create mobile applications because it is a huge framework and also independent and that is one of the reasons why Angular has a higher performance among other frameworks or libraries.
As seen in the image above, this framework its self can be used on a variety of different devices. If you need a reason to learn Angular this will be the best reason to start now.
#why Angular
- The Angular development environment allows developers, in the form of Progressive Web Apps, to use modern web platform capabilities to deliver app-like experiences.
- With simple templates, Angular tools allow developers to reuse their code and create features quickly.
- Developers can expand the template language with their own components, as well as select from a large variety of existing components.
If more convincing is needed, Angular is one of more than 60,000 GitHub stars in the elite JavaScript framework. Angular has rooted its spot in the list of best web development frameworks with consistent updates. For their frontend development, famous brands such as Microsoft, Autodesk, MacDonald’s, UPS, Cisco Solution Partner Program, AT&T, Apple, Adobe, GoPro, ProtonMail, Clarity Design System, Upwork, Freelancer, Udemy, YouTube, Paypal, Nike, Google, Telegram, Weather, iStockphoto, AWS, Crunchbase also use Angular.
In order to create very professional and high-quality web or mobile applications, we will dig deep into the most common libraries to be used for this platform.
#1 Angular Material/Material 2 Library
Angular Material is one of the biggest libraries to use when it comes to Angular and this library is more like a complete package that involves a lot of different technologies. If you visit this library’s website and look at the components you will be able to see elements such as cards, checkbox, dialog, chips, button sheet, button toggle, autocomplete, divider, and a lot more.
This library has many elements that others do not really have, so with ionic you kind of already have some material design for android but if you are working on a web version of your application or if you are in general the material design then you should go ahead and try this library. Besides the regular controls, there are also other things inside the component def kit which you also use.
Angular Material is a really great URI choice, and over 47,043 developers download this library on a weekly basis.
#Installation
There is a simple command you will have to run on your terminal in order to install this library so that you can use it on your application.
In addition, the ng add command can carry out the following configurations:
- To package.json, add project dependencies
- Connect the Roboto font to your index.html.
- Add the font of the Material Design icon to your index.html
You will have to wait a few minutes after running the command for the library to be mounted on your computer and you will be able to use it.
#2 NG-Bootstrap / NGX-Bootstrap
If you are a huge fan of Bootstrap then this library is your friend. NG and NGX Bootstrap are very similar libraries with a slight differences. based on the research we have done so far we found that the difference between these two is:
In the format used for their date selector, one distinction is. Ng-bootstrap uses an entity, but a string is taken from ngx-bootstrap, which is much simpler to use. Ng-bootstrap does not seem to be sponsored — appendTo body is the top request and the maintainer says he’s not working on the project.
NGX-Bootstrap
All core Bootstrap components powered by Angular are provided by NGX-Bootstrap. So, it is not appropriate to use the original JS components, but to use Bootstrap’s CSS and Markup. It also includes all Angular-powered core (and not only) Bootstrap components. So you don’t need to use original JS elements, but Bootstrap provides us with markup and CSS.
Installation
As always there is a command that you will have to run to work with any library, we will list this command below that you can use to work with this library.
NG-Bootstrap
From the Github starts we would say that NG-Bootstrap is a bit ahead but there is no huge difference between them, both libraries are reliable and easy to work with. So with this package, you will have access to Bootstrap elements which are great in itself.
It is really highly recommended to work with this library and many developers use it in their projects and perhaps you will be able to visit this library’s website and check out the Demo and also take a look at their native elements and widgets.
Installation
Simply run this command on your terminal to start using this library.
After that, you are simply ready to use it and enjoy and if you used Bootstrap in the past you will notice that it is a simple UI and you can’t really go wrong with anything related to it.
#3 NG2 Charts Library
There are actually a lot of chart libraries to use for Angular such as chart 3D, chart JS and many more great alternatives. This library was picked because it is definitely a great wrapper around the chart.js. You will have to install chart.js as well.
If you take a look at the samples from this library’s website you will immediately see that there are many samples that you can work with. Basically, everything included in either of those packages, if you also check out NGS-Charts by Swimlane you that also provide programmers with great demos. Try to give these packages a try and figure out which one of them is the best for you to use.
#Installation
As we mentioned you will have to install both of the libraries in order to use NG2-Charts, make sure to run these commands in order.
- Install ng2-charts using npm
2. Install Chart.js library
Most of the chart packages look pretty great and they are really easy to use the only downside is that the configuration for all of them is a little bit tricky so you just have to get into how to structure the data you will work with, other than you should be able to use the chart library without any issues.
#4 Angular Fire 🔥 Library
This library is really popular among developers its weekly downloads are around 77,988 and that is why this library has to be on this list. Angular Fire is the wrapper around the firebase and database, with it you can use firebase in a more Angular friendly way.
It is very easy and simple to use this library and it contains a lot of elements that are perhaps a little bit more tricky if you just rely on using Javascript SDK (software development kit) like authentication which was recently introduced by Angular Fire. As mentioned, it is pretty easy to use and if you take a look at the Github of this library you will find everything included for you to work with.
#installation
We are pretty sure by know you realized that there is a command to install any library that you are interested in using.
If you plan on using Firebase in your projects it does not matter if you are going to be working with Angular or other frameworks, you should definitely use Angular Firebase as the wrapper in your projects to get started.
#Conclusion
Hopefully, part two of this Angular article will help you with your future projects and make them look a lot nicer and fancier, and as said Angular can be used to develop web apps and mobile apps. In part three of another article, we will talk about more popular libraries that senior developers and big companies use.
