What is Angular?

Angular is a popular open-source Typescript framework and free to use. Considered to be a JavaScript-based framework,TypeScript.is its primary programming language. TypeScript  is Developed by Microsoft and its  superset of JavaScript, which simply means that TypeScript has all the capabilities that JS has and more additional features. Angular is majorly used for developing fully-functional web apps.

Developed by Google, Angular was released for public use in 2016 September. The base version of Angular is Version 2.0, and its current edition is Angular 14.1.0.

A most popular framework is an ideal option for developing powerful web applications having modern design and highly dynamic behavior. Angular is modular in its nature, which means you can divide the whole application into small parts (known as  modules) that represent a particular functionality. Angular makes it possible to develop high performance web applications with ease by sticking with the MVC architecture and offers two-way data binding.

Features of Angular:

Angular is one of the most powerful JavaScript web frameworks out there, all the thanks to its wide range of features. The leading JavaScript web framework facilitates the development of modern and high-performance applications and also makes the development process much easier. Here is the most notable features of Angular that you should know about:

• Cross-Platform: With Angular, you can not only design UIs for web applications but also for native mobile applications as well as desktop applications. Also, the framework comes in handy if you want to build applications for macOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems.
• Makes Use of TypeScript: Angular makes use of TypeScript, which is much better than JavaScript due to the fact that it is a statically-typed language. It means that there will be fewer errors during the compilation time as the types of variables are defined beforehand. Also, any piece of JavaScript code is valid in TypeScript code. Moreover, if you are familiar with JavaScript, learning TypeScript would be very easy.
• Angular CLI (Command Line Interface): Angular CLI speeds up the development process. From setting up the project by adding components and services, there are several tasks that you can achieve by simply using Angular’s native CLI.
• Data Binding and Dependency Injection: The data binding feature will allow you to add dynamic behavior to the web pages developed by using Angular. Normally, two-way data binding occurs between the model and view components. Whenever you make some changes in the UI elements, the changes will be reflected in the model or domain logic in real-time. Also, the vice-versa holds true.
• The dependency injection feature makes it feasible to create entities that can deal with the dependencies of components. For instance, services in Angular can perform tasks like fetching data from the server and applying validation rules to the user input. You can make these tasks available to multiple components, and the process of making a service available to a component is called dependency injection.
• Advanced Animations: Angular comes with  immense support for complex animations. As a developer, you can effortlessly add various animations to your application and that too without the need to write lengthy code. Its committed functional API for animations makes it equitably simple to introduce animations to different sections of the UI.
• Unit Testing Support: With Angular, it becomes possible to conduct unit testing with relative ease and thus, ensure that your code has minimal bugs. The web framework use the Karma test runner for quick and easy debugging.

What is AngularJS?

AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework appropriate for front-end web development. Moreover, developed by Google, the intent of AngularJS is to facilitate the development of single-page applications. 

One of the most striking things about AngularJS is that it is the first-ever version of Angular. To put it simply, all the 1.XX versions belong to AngularJS, and it is also known as Angular 1. On the other hand, version 2 and subsequent versions are called Angular.

In 2020 Google introduced AngularJS and it is created by using JavaScript. Unlike Angular 2 and later versions, TypeScript is not used in AngularJS. It is an important point of distinction between Angular and AngularJS.

The framework is extensively known for creating dynamic websites and web applications. Its support for writing code in the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture makes it practicable for developers to add dynamic behavior to web applications. Also, the architecture comes in handy for easy management of the source code and enables faster development.

Features of AngularJS:

Prior to the release of Angular 2, AngularJS was broadly adopted and used to create performant web applications. The reason is that AngularJS offers an extensive variety of features that allows faster development and also ensures better code maintainability. Following are the most notable features of AngularJS:

• Utilizing Plain JavaScript: AngularJS makes use of JavaScript programming language and it has nothing to do with TypeScript. Also, the framework makes use of plain JavaScript, which means that the models in AngularJS are plain JS objects. This feature makes the code developed with AngularJS very easy to test and maintain.
• Controllers and Directives: The directive and controllers in AngularJS give you the power to decide the functionality and have complete control over the behavior of an application.
  
  The controllers let you define the behavior of DOM (Document Object Model) elements. You can decide how DOM elements should act under particular circumstances. On the other hand, directives are added directly into the HTML code to integrate particular functionality within the application. It’s important to note that controllers are created individually while the directives are used directly within the (HTML) templates.
• Reusable Components: With AngularJS, you can design reusable components that you can use many times within an application. For creating these components, you have to make use of directives. A component will represent a particular functionality.
• Routing: Routing is the feature that makes it practicable to switch between various views of an application. In simple words, routing authorized users to navigate through different pages of a website or different sections of a web app. Single-page applications created with Angular let users switch between different views without the need to reload the whole app or the web page.

Difference Between Angular and AngularJS:

It is true that Angular and AngularJS share some common characteristics as the former is the enhanced version of the latter. However, when Angular was launched, it was meant to be a major update of AngularJS with lots of changes and added functionalities. Thus, it was purposely made different from its antecedent.

Below is a detailed comparison table that will help you know the difference between Angular and AngularJS on the basis of several distinct parameters:

Conclusion:

Angular is a great framework, it has many improvements in terms of AngularJS, it is good for bigger applications along with good for smaller applications, but there is a huge competition between Angular and AngularJS.