Angular 16 Features: Breaking The Boundaries And Raising The Bar!

Sakthi S

June 23, 2023

Last updated: November 15, 2023

Table of Contents

Quick Summary Of Angular 16 Features And Updates

The Angular Team at Google is renowned for their commitment to enhancing the developer experience and consistently delivering exciting updates to the Angular framework. Staying true to their tradition of releasing a major update every six months, they have unveiled the latest version of Angular, i.e. Angular 16 features, which brings with it remarkable advancements in reactivity, server-side rendering, and tooling.

However, whether you’re a business owner or a developer, you will probably be curious about this most recent iteration of Angular. Look no further, as we delve into this blog post to provide you with an in-depth overview of the features and updates introduced in Angular version 16. Get ready to discover the exciting enhancements that accompany this highly anticipated release!

For a while now, developers and enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting the release of Angular 16 new features, and it seems that this version will not disappoint. While the integration of the Signals pattern is certainly a notable addition, Angular 16 features bring much more to the table, making it an exciting release for the web application development community.

Angular 16 Updates: The Key Highlights

Angular v16 has embraced the ongoing Angular revolution by introducing a range of enhancements and updates that significantly improve its efficiency and appeal to the developer community and technology enthusiasts. This release of Angular has prioritized addressing numerous quality-of-life improvements based on popular feature requests, accumulating an impressive total of over 2500 thumbs up on GitHub. So having said that, let’s delve into the exciting features and advancements that Angular v16 brings to the table.

Angular 16 Features & Benefits In A Glance

Angular Signals (Developer Preview) that enhances the control of the state changes in applications.
Enhanced Hydration Developer Preview
Faster Builds With The esbuild Developer Preview
Improved Documentation And Schematics for Standalone Components
Options To Enhance JavaScript Bundles Created By Angular CLI
Bind Router Information To Component Inputs

The Basic Difference Between Angular 15 & Angular 16 Features

The basic differentiation between Angular 15 & Angular 16 features is given in the table below:

What’s New In Angular 16?

A Closer Look At Angular 16 Features: Unveiling the Latest Innovations!

Angular being a popular open-source web application development framework comes with a bundle of features & benefits and the newest version, (i.e) Angular 16 is nothing less than a diamond.

The following are some of the most recent upgrades and notable key benefits of Angular 16.

1. Angular 16 Signals (Developer Preview)

The newest feature that makes it possible to control state changes in Angular applications is called “Signals”. Signals are essentially functions that can be adjusted by invoking them with a new value through the “set()” method. The concept of Angular 16 Signals draws inspiration from Solid.js and facilitates the retrieval of a value by utilizing the “get()” method.

The provided code snippet establishes a computed value called ‘fullName’, which relies on the signals ‘firstName’ and ‘lastName’. Additionally, an effect is declared, where the callback function will execute whenever any of the signals it reads, including ‘fullName’, undergoes a change. Consequently, ‘fullName’ indirectly depends on firstName and lastName.

Upon assigning the value “John” to ‘firstName’, the browser will output the following message in the console:

“Name changed: John Doe”

2. Enhanced Hydration Developer Preview

In prior versions of Angular, when bootstrapping on a page that was server-side rendered or compile-time pre-rendered, Angular would discard any existing DOM nodes and begin from scratch. However, with the enhanced hydration support in version Angular 16 changes, developers now have the option to reuse these pre-existing DOM nodes and this developer preview tool proves to be beneficial in numerous scenarios, as it contributes to faster page loading.

3. Faster Builds With The esbuild Developer Preview

Angular CLI version 16 introduces developer preview support for the new builders based on esbuild. This revamped design can drastically reduce the construction time in various scenarios. Additionally, the preview includes integration with Vite, which enables the CLI to utilize Vite as its development server.

You can try this new build setup by updating your angular.json:

“architect”: {
“build”: {
“builder”: “@angular-devkit/build-angular:browser-esbuild”,

4. Removal Of Ngcc Or Angular Compatibility Compiler

To ensure compatibility with libraries built on the previous view engine, Angular initially introduced ngcc. However, in the latest Angular 16 changes, all view engine-related code, including ngcc, has been removed. This removal significantly reduced the size of the Angular bundle. Furthermore, starting from version 16, Angular no longer supports the utilization of Angular View Engine modules. Although these libraries are not officially supported, they present significant compatibility. Therefore, Angular’s transition from View Engine to Ivy is now fully completed.

5. Improved Documentation And Schematics For Standalone Components

Angular version 16 has introduced a powerful feature that enhances documentation, schematics, and component creation within your applications. With this feature, you can create standalone components that are not tied to any specific module and can be utilized in various parts of your program. These independent components offer great flexibility and are particularly valuable for building reusable user interface elements or libraries.

6. Exploring Options To Improve JavaScript Bundles Created By Angular CLI

This feature explores various strategies to enhance JavaScript bundles generated by Angular CLI in order to improve the loading speed and reduce the overall size of Angular applications. The available options include differential loading, tree-shaking, code-splitting, and ES modules. These choices aim to optimize the performance and efficiency of Angular applications by enabling faster loading times and minimizing the size of the generated bundles.

7. Bind Router Information To Component Inputs

The following router data can now be directly accessed by the component as an input. As a result, one can utilize inputs to connect Router information to component inputs instead of relying on ActivatedRoute to retrieve these values. This eliminates the need for excessive boilerplate code in the application.

8. Standalone Component Migration And Scaffolding

Angular v16 includes migration diagrams and a standalone migration guide to help developers convert their apps to standalone APIs. These tools significantly minimize the time and effort required to transition your code to independent components, directives, and pipes.

You can now seamlessly generate new Angular applications with standalone components by running:

“ng new –standalone”

Required Inputs

You can now mark component and directive inputs as required:

export class ColorPicker {
@Input({ required: true }) defaultColor: string;
}

If a template includes a component without specifying all required inputs, Angular will report a build-time error.

9. takeUntilDestroyed and DestroyRef

Angular 16 has gradually been transitioning towards enabling a more functional coding approach. One step in this direction is the introduction of ‘DestroyRef’ and the ‘takeUntilDestroyed’ RxJS operator. These serve as replacements for the ‘ngOnDestroy’ lifecycle hook. Since ‘ngOnDestroy’ is bound to classes, it cannot be used within functions, even if desired.

takeUntilDestroyed and DestroyRef feature in Angular 16

Other Angular 16 Features and Improvements

Support For Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS, a popular utility-first CSS framework that simplifies styling by providing pre-defined classes, is already integrated and supported in Angular 16. This integration brings several benefits such as accelerated development, consistent design, responsive layouts, and customizable & extendable styles. Leveraging Tailwind CSS enables a more efficient and flexible approach to style in web development.

Support For CSS Isolation

In the latest version of Angular, you can utilize either Shadow DOM or emulated encapsulation to achieve the goal of limiting component styles to specific elements. These features enable you to prevent conflicts between different components by ensuring that their styles are isolated and contained within their respective elements. This ensures a more modular and maintainable approach to styling in Angular applications.

Increase Security And Prevents Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks

The latest iteration of Angular introduces built-in support for Trusted Types, a feature aimed at enhancing security and mitigating Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. By implementing strict guidelines for string usage in sensitive scenarios, this browser feature enables safer string sanitization and actively rejects hazardous strings.

Dynamic Import Of Router Data Feature

You can now easily link router data to your component inputs using the dynamic import of router data feature without injecting the ActivatedRoute service. This can help you make the code more simple and cleaner.

Angular Material

In Angular 16, a new date range picker component has been added to Angular Material, a UI component library that adheres to the Material Design principles. This addition enhances the functionality and user experience of your web application by providing an intuitive way to select start and end dates using a calendar interface. With this component, users can easily pick date ranges, making it more convenient to work with date-based data in your application.

End Lines: Go Angular!

The recent evolution of Angular and updates from the Angular Team at Google are truly remarkable and are set to delight developers, tech enthusiasts, and the wider community. With the introduction of Angular 16 new features, developers are now empowered with a plethora of new ideas that enhance their development experience and enable them to build even more robust and efficient applications. The team’s focus on enhancing code efficiency and improving the overall developer experience is evident in the enhancements to reactivity, hydration, signals, and more. These improvements pave the way for even more remarkable updates and changes as the Angular Team continues to innovate and push boundaries.

Thus, if you’re a product owner planning to build your next project with Angular, hiring an AngularJS developer will enable you to unleash the full potential of this powerful framework. Hence, embrace the advantages of the latest Angular 16 features for your web application development and enjoy the key features of angular in the long term.