Tips on types, @defer, and more!

Alain Chautard

In the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter, I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three short articles to revisit:

  • TypeScript is one of the best tools in the Angular toolbox, especially when using types properly. You can (and most likely must) use types with generics and the HttpClient to specify the type of your data responses. This also applies to signals (as shown in these examples), resources, subjects, and everything else. And always remember that using any is evil.

Two updates worth knowing about:

  • The recording of my 1-hour talk “Intro to Cypress for end-to-end testing” can be found on YouTube. It was too short to cover everything, but it still gives a good overview of what Cypress is all about.
  • Google I/O is coming soon on May 20-21. It’s a free hybrid event to learn about the latest in Angular, web technologies, and even AI and all things Google if you’re so inclined.

One question to ponder:

  • Have you considered using @defer in your apps? It’s the most flexible and configurable option to speed up your Angular applications with lazy-loading and rendering. For instance, if your application has very long pages with a lot of scrolling, you could lazy load the bottom of such pages while scrolling (or using other triggers), making the initial page load much faster.

Angular Can I Use, Global Summit, and more!

Alain Chautard

In the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter, I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three short articles to revisit:

  • Whether you use RxJs Subjects or Angular Signals for reactivity, using the right visibility modifier in TypeScript can help you expose your application state in a safe, read-only manner. These articles highlight the “why” and the “how” of visibility modifiers. They also cover different interesting syntax options.

Two Angular updates worth knowing about:

  • Angular is evolving rapidly, and new APIs are introduced with both minor and major versions. Some are experimental, some are in developer preview, some are stable, while others get deprecated over time. With Angular Can I Use, you can know the status of any feature in just seconds:
  • The recording of Geekle’s Angular Global Summit is now available for free on YouTube. With talks from Manfred Steye, Stephen Flui, yours truly, and many others, I’m sure you’ll find interesting talks in that video!

One question to ponder

  • Did you know that with the new @for block, you don’t need to declare local variables? You can use $even, $index, and other contextual variables directly:

    Instead of this:
    @for (item of items; track item.id; let idx = $index) {
    {{idx}} - {{item.name}}
    }

    You can do just the following:
    @for (item of items; track item.id) {
    {{$index}} - {{item.name}}
    }

Selectorless update, more conferences, and free videos!

Alain Chautard

In the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter, I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three (or four) Angular updates to know about:

  • The Angular team started teasing its new “selector-less” RFC with some examples of what this could look like. The goal is to get rid of component and directive selectors (and hopefully extra imports) and this could be available as an experiment as soon as Angular v20:

  • We now have a date and location for ng-conf 2025: October 17-18 in Baltimore, USA. The event is moving closer to Europe and will be preceded by JSConf North America at the same venue on October 14-16.
  • All videos from FrontEnd Nation Angular Day are now available on this Youtube playlist.
  • You can already register for free for the next FrontendNation Event (3-5 June) at https://frontendnation.com/

Two articles to revisit:

  • None this week, lots of videos to watch in the previous section!

One little thing to ponder:

  • Did you know that instead of using [class]=" isImportant ? 'highlight' : ' ' " you can do [class.highlight] ="isImportant" in your templates?

Tree houses and Angular Day!

Alain Chautard

This week, I’m attending the Microsoft Global MVP summit in the Pacific Northwest of the US, and I thought it would be a good idea to get some inspiration by writing from one of the tree houses on the Microsoft Redmond campus. So here is the view from where I’m writing this newsletter today:

I’m using the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter, posting some good content to review, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

One video to watch:

Two Angular updates:

  • Directives such as ngIf and ngFor will soon get deprecated to favor the new control flow blocks. An automated migration CLI command is already available, so don’t hesitate to use it.
  •  Frontend Nation Angular Day with Minko Gechev (his talk is about Angular in 2025) and other Angular rock stars is tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this!). It’s a free online event, and I’ll be speaking, too. You can still register here.

One question to think about:

Have you ever used the Angular profiler? If not, you should try it to see how much time Angular spends rendering and updating your components.

Major Angular conferences back this fall!

Alain Chautard

This week, we’re back to using the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter. I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three short articles to revisit:

Two Angular updates:

  • ng-conf will be back this fall in the US! That is great news. On top of that, Angular Connect will be back in London, UK on September 13th 2025. Tickets are already available!
  • Next week on March 27th, we’ll be running Frontend Nation Angular Day with Minko Gechev, Sarah Drasner, and more GDEs and Angular team members! It’s a free, online event. Save the date now and register here.

One question to think about:

  • Did you know that the Angular dev tools display current Signal values? Makes it super easy to debug Angular code without breakpoints!

Angular 19.2, @defer, and the resource API

Alain Chautard

This week, we’re back to using the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter. I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three short articles to revisit:

Two Angular updates:

  • Angular 19.2 is available! It comes with quite a few interesting experimental features, such as a new httpResource (the signal-based alternative to HttpClient), a defaultValue option for resources, the ability to use JavaScript template strings in Angular templates, as well a new CLI migration to use self-closing tags: ⁠ng generate @angular/core:self-closing-tag

  • On March 27th, we’ll be running Frontend Nation Angular Day with Minko Gechev, Sarah Drasner, and Jessica Janiuk from the Angular team! It’s a free, online event. Save the date now and register here.

    Frontend Nation Angular

One question to think about:

  • Have you tried the resource API? It’s promising, and the Angular team is considering it as the solution for reactivity with Signals and without RxJs. Check out my quick tutorial here.

Angular 19.2 is almost there, CSS tricks, and more!

Alain Chautard

As usual, we’re using the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter this week. I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three articles to revisit:

Two Angular updates:

  • Angular 19.2 just got its first RC version, and it features a new httpResource, which aims to replace the HttpClient with a Signal-based approach. Manfred Steyer published a preview of the feature here.
  • The FREE Angular Weekend is happening this weekend at certificates.dev! A great way to get free certification training and take practice tests to see how you’d fare in the Angular mid-level certification exam.

One question to think about:

A debugging quest and a free Angular weekend!

Alain Chautard

As often, I’m using the updated newsletter format this week. I’m posting a few interesting updates to know about and one question to ponder:

Two Angular updates:

  • Gérôme Grignon just released the Angular Debug Quest, a GitHub repo where you can practice fixing common Angular app bugs in one place. The project is open to feedback and additional bugs to fix, so feel free to contribute and give it a try!
  • The FREE Angular Weekend is happening soon over at certificates.dev! A great way to get free certification training and take practice tests to see how you’d fare in the Angular mid-level certification exam:

One question to think about and some posts to learn more about it:

  • Do you lint your code for extra feedback on best practices? Linting is a great way to learn about blind spots we all have as developers. It can also teach you some alternative syntaxes and keywords. Read more about eslint here.

The Angular documentary is out!

Alain Chautard

Big news this week: The Angular documentary is now available for free on YouTube! It’s a 1-hour video going through the origins of the framework and its evolution over time, featuring many of the Angular community members who contributed to the framework’s history.

On a similar note, I found the TypeScript origins documentary fascinating, and it’s also available on YouTube.

Since that’s a lot of content to look, I’ll leave you with only one extra article to revisit for this week:

Do you know about the different types of RxJs subjects? Learn more about them here.

Signals and what’s ahead for Angular in 2025

Alain Chautard

As usual, we’re using the 3-2-1 format of the newsletter this week. I’m posting a few essential articles to revisit, updates to know about, and one question to ponder:

Three articles to revisit:

Two Angular updates:

  • The Angular team announced its priorities for 2025: Signal forms, RFC for selectorless components (meaning no more imports needed for components !), promote zoneless to developer preview, and replace Karma for unit testing.
  • Our FREE monthly online workshop is scheduled for this Thursday, don’t forget to register now. I’ll talk about different simple strategies to migrate from RxJs to Signals in Angular.

One question to think about:

  • Signals are stable, with the exception of the effect function. Since Angular is going all in on Signals, with Signal forms being next in the pipeline, have you started migrating your apps to use Signals instead of RxJs? Attend our next free workshop to see me do it live.