Angular 9 was released on Februrary 7th, 2020. Generally speaking, this isn’t a flashy release with lots of goodies, but instead a release that gives a huge (needed) update to plenty of behind the scene components.

Angular Ivy

Angular Ivy is the name given to Angular’s new compilation and rendering pipeline. Essentially when you build and package your Angular app, the HTML, JS and CSS you have written is all compiled and packaged up to be delivered to a users browser. While the way you write code doesn’t change, the way Angular builds thing has changed dramatically without you having to do anything. This results in :

• Faster build times (Which is massive if you do any sort of git pre-commit hook using ng build!)
• Smaller build package sizes (Less to deliver to the client results in your page loading faster)
• Better understanding of how modules fit together unlocks better tree shaking, ability to lazy load components etc.
• Improved CSS and style binding

And a tonne more!

Probably the most exciting thing to me are the first two. Faster build times is huge to me as I like to do a full build before checking any work in just to make sure everything is playing nice, but the slow down in commiting even a one line change is pretty big right now. Secondly, the smaller build packages are pretty amazing. There is this official image floating around that demonstrates the difference :

40% size decrease!? Sign me up!

What Else?

I get that Ivy maybe isn’t the most exciting thing in the world if you were looking to get your hands on something new and shiny. Angular 9 does have a bunch of bug fixes and deprecations, but nothing new that will completely blow you away. In terms of methods being deprecated, you can see the full list here : https://angular.io/guide/updating-to-version-9. Most notably are things like Renderer becoming Renderer2, and the <ngForm> tag becoming <ng-form>. Nothing too spectacular.

Upgrading

To update your existing application to Angular 9, simply run :

ng update @angular/cli @angular/core

👋 Hey, I'm Wade

Wade is a full-stack developer that loves writing and explaining complex topics. He is an expert in Angular JS and was the owner of tutorialsforangular.com which was acquired by Upmostly in July 2022.