Angular, version 2: proprioception-reinforcement

Today, at a special meetup at Google HQ, we announced the final release version of Angular 2, the full-platform successor to Angular 1.

What does "final" mean? Stability that's been validated across a wide range of use cases, and a framework that's been optimized for developer productivity, small payload size, and performance. With ahead-of-time compilation and built-in lazy-loading, we’ve made sure that you can deploy the fastest, smallest applications across the browser, desktop, and mobile environments. This release also represents huge improvements to developer productivity with the Angular CLI and styleguide.

Angular 1 first solved the problem of how to develop for an emerging web. Six years later, the challenges faced by today’s application developers, and the sophistication of the devices that applications must support, have both changed immensely. With this release, and its more capable versions of the Router, Forms, and other core APIs, today you can build amazing apps for any platform. If you prefer your own approach, Angular is also modular and flexible, so you can use your favorite third-party library or write your own.

From the beginning, we built Angular in collaboration with the open source development community. We are grateful to the large number of contributors who dedicated time to submitting pull requests, issues, and repro cases, who discussed and debated design decisions, and validated (and pushed back on) our RCs. We wish we could have brought every one of you in person to our meetup so you could celebrate this milestone with us tonight!

What’s next?

Angular is now ready for the world, and we’re excited for you to join the thousands of developers already building with Angular 2.  But what’s coming next for Angular?

A few of the things you can expect in the near future from the Angular team:

• Bug fixes and non-breaking features for APIs marked as stable
• More guides and live examples specific to your use cases
• More work on animations
• Angular Material 2
• Moving WebWorkers out of experimental
• More features and more languages for Angular Universal
• Even more speed and payload size improvements

Semantic Versioning

We heard loud and clear that our RC labeling was confusing. To make it easy to manage dependencies on stable Angular releases, starting today with Angular 2.0.0, we will move to semantic versioning.  Angular versioning will then follow the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH scheme as described by semver:

1. the MAJOR version gets incremented when incompatible API changes are made to stable APIs,
2. the MINOR version gets incremented when backwards-compatible functionality are added,
3. the PATCH version gets incremented when backwards-compatible bug are fixed.

Moving Angular to semantic versioning ensures rapid access to the newest features for our component and tooling ecosystem, while preserving a consistent and reliable development environment for production applications that depend on stability between major releases, but still benefit from bug fixes and new APIs.

Contributors

Aaron Frost, Aaron (Ron) Tsui, Adam Bradley, Adil Mourahi, agpreynolds, Ajay Ambre, Alberto Santini, Alec Wiseman, Alejandro Caravaca Puchades, Alex Castillo, Alex Eagle, Alex Rickabaugh, Alex Wolfe, Alexander Bachmann, Alfonso Presa, Ali Johnson, Aliaksei Palkanau, Almero Steyn, Alyssa Nicoll, Alxandr, André Gil, Andreas Argelius, Andreas Wissel, Andrei Alecu, Andrei Tserakhau, Andrew, Andrii Nechytailov, Ansel Rosenberg, Anthony Zotti, Anton Moiseev, Artur Meyster, asukaleido, Aysegul Yonet, Aziz Abbas, Basarat Ali Syed, BeastCode, Ben Nadel, Bertrand Laporte, Blake La Pierre, Bo Guo, Bob Nystrom, Borys Semerenko, Bradley Heinz, Brandon Roberts, Brendan Wyse, Brian Clark, Brian Ford, Brian Hsu, dozingcat, Brian Yarger, Bryce Johnson, CJ Avilla, cjc343, Caitlin Potter, Cédric Exbrayat, Chirayu Krishnappa, Christian Weyer, Christoph Burgdorf, Christoph Guttandin, Christoph Hoeller, Christoffer Noring, Chuck Jazdzewski, Cindy, Ciro Nunes, Codebacca, Cody Lundquist, Cody-Nicholson, Cole R Lawrence, Constantin Gavrilete, Cory Bateman, Craig Doremus, crisbeto, Cuel, Cyril Balit, Cyrille Tuzi, Damien Cassan, Dan Grove, Dan Wahlin, Daniel Leib, Daniel Rasmuson, dapperAuteur, Daria Jung, David East, David Fuka, David Reher, David-Emmanuel Divernois, Davy Engone, Deborah Kurata, Derek Van Dyke, DevVersion, Dima Kuzmich, Dimitrios Loukadakis, Dmitriy Shekhovtsov, Dmitry Patsura, Dmitry Zamula, Dmytro Kulyk, Donald Spencer, Douglas Duteil, dozingcat, Drew Moore, Dylan Johnson, Edd Hannay, Edouard Coissy, eggers, elimach, Elliott Davis, Eric Jimenez, Eric Lee Carraway, Eric Martinez, Eric Mendes Dantas, Eric Tsang, Essam Al Joubori, Evan Martin, Fabian Raetz, Fahimnur Alam, Fatima Remtullah, Federico Caselli, Felipe Batista, Felix Itzenplitz, Felix Yan, Filip Bruun, Filipe Silva, Flavio Corpa, Florian Knop, Foxandxss, Gabe Johnson, Gabe Scholz, GabrielBico, Gautam krishna.R, Georgii Dolzhykov, Georgios Kalpakas, Gerd Jungbluth, Gerard Sans, Gion Kunz, Gonzalo Ruiz de Villa, Grégory Bataille, Günter Zöchbauer, Hank Duan, Hannah Howard, Hans Larsen, Harry Terkelsen, Harry Wolff, Henrique Limas, Henry Wong, Hiroto Fukui, Hongbo Miao, Huston Hedinger, Ian Riley, Idir Ouhab Meskine, Igor Minar, Ioannis Pinakoulakis, The Ionic Team, Isaac Park, Istvan Novak, Itay Radotzki, Ivan Gabriele, Ivey Padgett, Ivo Gabe de Wolff, J. Andrew Brassington, Jack Franklin, Jacob Eggers, Jacob MacDonald, Jacob Richman, Jake Garelick, James Blacklock, James Ward, Jason Choi, Jason Kurian, Jason Teplitz, Javier Ros, Jay Kan, Jay Phelps, Jay Traband, Jeff Cross, Jeff Whelpley, Jennifer Bland, jennyraj, Jeremy Attali, Jeremy Elbourn, Jeremy Wilken, Jerome Velociter, Jesper Rønn-Jensen, Jesse Palmer, Jesús Rodríguez, Jesús Rodríguez, Jimmy Gong, Joe Eames, Joel Brewer, John Arstingstall, John Jelinek IV, John Lindquist, John Papa, John-David Dalton, Jonathan Miles, Joost de Vries, Jorge Cruz, Josef Meier, Josh Brown, Josh Gerdes, Josh Kurz, Josh Olson, Josh Thomas, Joseph Perrott, Joshua Otis, Josu Guiterrez, Julian Motz, Julie Ralph, Jules Kremer, Justin DuJardin, Kai Ruhnau, Kapunahele Wong, Kara Erickson, Kathy Walrath, Keerti Parthasarathy, Kenneth Hahn, Kevin Huang, Kevin Kirsche, Kevin Merckx, Kevin Moore, Kevin Western, Konstantin Shcheglov, Kurt Hong, Levente Morva, laiso, Lina Lu, LongYinan, Lucas Mirelmann, Luka Pejovic, Lukas Ruebbelke, Marc Fisher, Marc Laval, Marcel Good, Marcy Sutton, Marcus Krahl, Marek Buko, Mark Ethan Trostler, Martin Gontovnikas, Martin Probst, Martin Staffa, Matan Lurey, Mathias Raacke, Matias Niemelä, Matt Follett, Matt Greenland, Matt Wheatley, Matteo Suppo, Matthew Hill, Matthew Schranz, Matthew Windwer, Max Sills, Maxim Salnikov, Melinda Sarnicki Bernardo, Michael Giambalvo, Michael Goderbauer, Michael Mrowetz, Michael-Rainabba Richardson, Michał Gołębiowski, Mikael Morlund, Mike Ryan, Minko Gechev, Miško Hevery, Mohamed Hegazy, Nan Schweiger, Naomi Black, Nathan Walker, The NativeScript Team, Nicholas Hydock, Nick Mann, Nick Raphael, Nick Van Dyck, Ning Xia, Olivier Chafik, Olivier Combe, Oto Dočkal, Pablo Villoslada Puigcerber, Pascal Precht, Patrice Chalin, Patrick Stapleton, Paul Gschwendtner, Pawel Kozlowski, Pengfei Yang, Pete Bacon Darwin, Pete Boere, Pete Mertz, Philip Harrison, Phillip Alexander, Phong Huynh, Polvista, Pouja, Pouria Alimirzaei, Prakal, Prayag Verma, Rado Kirov, Raul Jimenez, Razvan Moraru, Rene Weber, Rex Ye, Richard Harrington, Richard Kho, Richard Sentino, Rob Eisenberg, Rob Richardson, Rob Wormald, Robert Ferentz, Robert Messerle, Roberto Simonetti, Rodolfo Yabut, Sam Herrmann, Sam Julien, Sam Lin, Sam Rawlins, Sammy Jelin, Sander Elias, Scott Hatcher, Scott Hyndman, Scott Little, ScottSWu, Sebastian Hillig, Sebastian Müller, Sebastián Duque, Sekib Omazic, Shahar Talmi, Shai Reznik, Sharon DiOrio, Shannon Ayres, Shefali Sinha, Shlomi Assaf, Shuhei Kagawa, Sigmund Cherem, Simon Hürlimann (CyT), Simon Ramsay, Stacy Gay, Stephen Adams, Stephen Fluin, Steve Mao, Steve Schmitt, Suguru Inatomi, Tamas Csaba, Ted Sander, Tero Parviainen, Thierry Chatel, Thierry Templier, Thomas Burleson, Thomas Henley, Tim Blasi, Tim Ruffles, Timur Meyster, Tobias Bosch, Tony Childs, Tom Ingebretsen, Tom Schoener, Tommy Odom, Torgeir Helgevold, Travis Kaufman, Trotyl Yu, Tycho Grouwstra, The Typescript Team, Uli Köhler, Uri Shaked, Utsav Shah, Valter Júnior, Vamsi V, Vamsi Varikuti, Vanga Sasidhar, Veikko Karsikko, Victor Berchet, Victor Mejia, Victor Savkin, Vinci Rufus, Vijay Menon, Vikram Subramanian, Vivek Ghaisas, Vladislav Zarakovsky, Vojta Jina, Ward Bell, Wassim Chegham, Wenqian Guo, Wesley Cho, Will Ngo, William Johnson, William Welling, Wilson Mendes Neto, Wojciech Kwiatek, Yang Lin, Yegor Jbanov, Zach Bjornson, Zhicheng Wang, and many more...

With gratitude and appreciation, and anticipation to see what you'll build next, welcome to the next stage of Angular.

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Hosting Inclusive Angular Events: Ideas from AngularConnect

We care a lot about making Angular's community inclusive and welcoming for everyone. 
Guest bloggers Vicky Carmichael and Ruth Yarnit are part of the White October Events team that co-organises AngularConnect.  If you're planning an Angular meetup or conference, you might find this post helpful in increasing the reach of your event. Enjoy!  - Naomi

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As an event organiser, you want your attendees to have an amazing time. You put a lot of thought into the content, the venue and the atmosphere – and these are all important – but your natural and unconscious biases may make it easy to forget about how your experience of an event differs from someone else’s.

There are lots of reasons an attendee may require additional support to ensure they have a great time at your event. Perhaps they have a disability or health condition that means they require special assistance to be able to access the event and enjoy it fully. Maybe they come from an underrepresented group within tech, and are experiencing a sense of isolation. Or they may be new to the industry and feel a little intimidated to be surrounded by more experienced developers.

This post outlines some of the measures the AngularConnect team are taking to improve accessibility at their conference, and offers some handy pointers for how you can implement these measures at your own Angular events. This is by no means an exhaustive list – we know there’s always more we could do. Please feel free to email us at hello@angularconnect.com if you have any comments or other ideas.

Code of Conduct

Having a Code of Conduct at your event demonstrates your commitment to ensuring all participants feel welcome, safe and comfortable without threat of intimidation or public embarrassment. Here are some tips if you’re implementing one for the first time:

• Start with a template, and adapt it for your specific industry and event. Check out Angular’s Code of Conduct, which applies to all of the projects under the Angular organisation on GitHub and the Angular community at large, including IRC, mailing lists, and on social media.
• Be sure to list specific examples of behaviours that constitute a violation of the code. For instance, the AngularConnect code includes the line: “Harassment includes offensive verbal comments, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.” This makes it easier to identify offending behaviour as it happens.
• Include clear instructions for what someone should do if they wish to report a violation of the Code of Conduct, and make sure all event staff are fully briefed on how to respond to such a report. AngularConnect staff wear brightly coloured t-shirts with the word “staff” or “organiser” on the back, so that they can be easily identified from afar by anyone needing assistance. Also provide details about how you will enforce your Code of Conduct.
• Make everyone aware of the Code of Conduct. Link to it clearly on your event website, and announce it on the day(s). We include a mention of the AngularConnect Code of Conduct at the bottom of every marketing email we send. This year we also plan to display large signs at the event reminding people where the code can be found, and how to report a violation. Make it clear that you expect all delegates, speakers, organisers and staff to comply with the code at all times and in all event spaces.
• Finally, don’t just pay lip service to your Code of Conduct. As event organisers, it’s our responsibility to use our judgement and take swift and appropriate action in the event of a violation of the Code of Conduct, and to send a clear message to our attendees.

Further Reading

Conference Code of Conduct
Codes of Conduct 101 + FAQ
Conference anti-harassment policy
HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community
Angular's Code of Conduct
AngularConnect Code of Conduct

Access Requirements

Making your event as accessible as reasonably possible will help ensure you’re not inadvertently excluding anyone from attending. People you should consider include wheelchair users and those with mobility impairments, people who are hard of hearing or deaf, people with visual impairments, and people with hidden impairments such as learning disabilities or mental health issues. Here are some measures you can take:

• On your event sign up form, include a checkbox for attendees to let you know if they have any special access requirements, and a field for them to provide further information. Make sure you check the feedback in plenty of time to make any necessary arrangements at the venue, and reach out to the attendee directly if you need more information to be able to accommodate their needs.
• When selecting a venue for your event, check that it’s fully wheelchair accessible. Consider whether it has step-free access, doorways wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, elevator access to relevant floors, and dedicated accessible toilet facilities.
• Have reserved seating at the front of the space for people with disabilities, such as wheelchair users and people with visual impairments to use, if they wish to.
• Enquire whether the venue has hearing induction loops installed in the relevant spaces and, if it doesn’t, think about hiring them in. The venue may be able to put you in touch with a supplier. At AngularConnect we’re installing a hearing loop in both of the main track spaces for use by people with hearing aids.
• Consider providing real-time captioning for talks. You can choose how to display this, but make sure captions are clearly visible to all participants. This is something we’re excited to provide at AngularConnect this year, and we’ve selected a service that provides attendees with a link that can be viewed and customised in the browser on their personal device. This service is not only helpful for people who are hard of hearing, but also those for whom English is not their first language, and anyone who finds it easier to take something in when they see it written down.
• Make it clear to people considering attending that service animals such as guide dogs are welcome at the event, and offer to provide complimentary tickets to assistants of those with disabilities.
• Invite participants to contact you with any access requirements they’d like to discuss, and commit to doing your best to accommodate them. If you need time to check whether you’re able to provide the assistance they need, you could offer to reserve their ticket in the meantime so that they don’t risk missing out.
• A full-day (or longer) event surrounded by crowds can be overwhelming for some people. If you’re running a conference for an audience of hundreds, you may wish to create a comfortable “quiet zone” for those who need to take a breather. At AngularConnect last year we had ran mindfulness sessions in our chill out area for those who need a peaceful moment’s reflection. We got positive feedback about this and we’re looking forward to bringing the sessions back this year.

Dietary requirements

If you’ll be serving breakfast, lunch or dinner, you should offer at least one vegetarian option available as standard. You can aim to cater for more specific requirements (such as gluten free, allergies, Kosher, Halal, vegan etc.) with advance notice. Ask all attendees to let you know about any special dietary requirements at the point of registration. Be sure to label major allergens such as gluten or nuts on food packaging where possible.

Scholarship scheme

For paid events, you may wish to make extra efforts to open up your event to people who don’t have access to the funds to buy a ticket. One method for doing this is to run a Scholarship scheme where you set aside a number of free tickets to give away to individuals from underrepresented groups in tech or those facing economic and social hardship. If you have the budget, you could also consider covering their travel and accommodation expenses. Some sponsors may be willing to support a scheme like this financially.

To get set up, design a basic online form to capture applicants’ information, such as their name, contact details, location, and their reason for applying to the Scholarship Scheme. Have a look at the AngularConnect Scholarship Fund form for inspiration. Be sure to link to the form on your site and tickets page, shout about it on social media, and reach out directly to groups working with relevant individuals to ask if they’ll help spread the word. Include clear details about who should apply, how the process works, any deadlines, and how and when you will notify them of the outcome.

There’s no exact science to evaluating the applications, but it’s best done by a small committee rather than by just one person. You should aim to award tickets to people who would otherwise not be able to attend, and who can show how the knowledge they gain at the event will be useful to them in their ongoing career.

Summary

There’s an awful lot to think about when organising a conference or meetup. As a team, we try to be mindful of accessibility at all stages of planning AngularConnect, but we know there are always more improvements we can make. We hope this post has provided some food for thought for other event organisers, and we’d love to chat with you if you have comments or ideas for additional ways to make events accessible. Catch us on on Twitter at @AngularConnect, or email hello@angularconnect.com.

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AngularJS-MTV Hack Night Recap and DIY Tips

For our first California meetup of the year, we thought we'd try something different and host a Hack Night.

Presentation style meetups are great for a deep dive into a single topic, but it can be hard for people to get to know each other or dive into a thorny problem during a short Q&A. We wanted to try a less structured format, where people could just bring a project to work on and get some help from each other and from our experts. If you have an active local developer community with a few willing experts, you might try a Hack Night as an alternate format for your next meetup.

Check out the photos from the event to get a feel for what it was like to be there.

We had a wide range of projects: mobile feature development, multi-user gaming, simple apps and complex ones. One team gave us a super cool demo of a new project about to launch, all based in Angular. We're sworn to secrecy, but we can't wait to share their blog post with you.

Some other projects from around the room included:

• Christie worked on an implementation of long click for a mobile HTML5 app
• Greg Weber, who spoke at the November meetup, updated his statechart library with AngularJS routing.
• Sean from the iUI web framework project wanted to work on integrating iUI with Angular.js. He came with some philosophical questions around the best way to support the $injector service.
• Dean Sofer and the AngularUI folks answered a ton of questions and worked on merging some of their outstanding pull requests.
• Dan Doyon and David Nelson worked together to get an infinite scroller working in an existing app.
• Tom worked on a mobile app to help language learners build vocabulary.
• A custom directive for the Aloha Editor
• A charity funding application
• Several projects doing Angular/MongoDB integration.

All in all, it was an interesting change of pace from our usual routine. It was inspiring to walk around the room at the end and see what people had built in a short time. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the community develops at the next one.

DIY Hack Night Tips

If you're planning a Hack Night of your own, here are some additional resources and tips:

• It's useful to have few experts on hand who can focus on interacting with people and helping with questions. 
• We asked people to tell us what they were working on before adding them to the event list. We then posted the answers on the wall at the meetup to help people get to know each other.
• You can order AngularJS T-shirts and stickers from the same suppliers we use. Or download our creative commons licensed logo art and make your own. Check out the FAQ doc on angularjs.org for details. 
• We've recently started a discussion label for "Hosting an Event" under our AngularJS Community on Google+ with tips for event organizers.
• Announce your Hack Night on the wiki Events page and share it with us on Google+ so that we can help you spread the word! Two of our attendees from Austin, TX just happened to be in town for business and were able to join at the last minute.

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About those directives

Turns out we forgot to publish September's meetup videos from the Mountain View meetup.  Yikes!  Well, better late than never.

Actually, this is some of our best content to date.  For the first time, Miško Hevery demystifies AngularJS Directives.  If you've struggled with some of the concepts and reasons behind writing directives, this one is for you.

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AngularJS Meetup Videos from July and August

AngularJS meetups are becoming monthly ritual for many AngularJS developers as well as the core team. Meetups provide an opportunity for the community around AngularJS to get together in various cities and talk about Angular stuff. Starting next month we are going to attempt to stream these events live via Google Hangouts. We still have some technical challenges to solve (it's not as simple as it sounds), but we'd like to open up these meetups to as many of you as possible in real time. In the meantime if you couldn't join us in person, check out these videos.

Rebuilding DoubleClick with AngularJS

More information about the event can be found on the meetup page.
The talk was also presented at our Mountain View meetup.


As a good follow up reading, check out Miško's recent blog post on how DI removes the problems associated with the main() method.

Building an AngularJS App

Back in July at our NYC meetup, we had a presentation on building an app with AngularJS. The famous ToDo app, narrated for your pleasure, including lots of audience questions about some of the core concepts.

More information about the event can be found on the meetup page.

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AngularJS Meetup June 2012 - Data-binding, HBO and Drag'n'Drop

The topics discussed at June's AngularJS meetups in Mountain View, NYC and Seattle included data-binding deep dive, how AngularJS is being used at HBO and why they picked it over Backbone.js and how Daniel Zen implemented drag'n'drop functionality in his AngularJS application.

Contents:

• 3m15s: Data-binding in AngularJS (Igor Minar)
  slides, plunk demo
• 1h00m35s: AngularJS chrome extension (Igor Minar)
  blog/screencast, project
• 1h04m39s: AngularJS at HBO (Charles Fulnecky)
  (waiting for permission to publish slides, check back in a few days)
• 1h29m43s: Drag-and-drop photo library with AngularJS (Dan Zen)
  example, code demo

In July, we'll discuss dependency injection in AngularJS and how we built TextDrive and wReader Chrome Platform apps for Google I/O using AngularJS. We'll leave a lot of time for free-form discussion about AngularJS. So come ready with questions, demos and apps to show off or ask about.

Also, for the first time, we'll do a meetup in San Francisco, in addition to all the other cities.

Join the local meetup groups to be notified of dates and locations:

• Mountain View
• New York City
• Seattle
• San Francisco

PS: The recording with similar content (but different audience questions) will be available in our youtube feed in a few days.

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AngularJS Meetup - May 2012

Last week we kicked off our effort to regularly meet AngularJS developers by hosting meetups in Mountain View and New York City.

Both meetups were well attended and we enjoyed meeting you all. You can check out the video recording from the event:

Event links:

• Event Meetup.com Page
• Slides
• Tutorial
• CI Server Overview
• Memory Game demo (source)
• Testacular
• JsTestDriver
• wReader demo (source)
• Colingo demo
• Event Photos

Now the good news: The next Bay Area meetup will happen on June 12! We hope to see you there. For more details please visit the event page and reserve your spot.

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