Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash
AngularJS is a JavaScript web framework developed and maintained by Google. It is used to create single page applications (SPA). AngularJS changed web application development, inspiring the creation of competitor web frameworks such as React and Vue.js.
The main advantage of the AngularJS is two-way data-binding, which helps one develop applications efficiently. Two-way data binding makes things much more convenient for developers. Before the birth of AngularJS, jQuery ruled web application development. jQuery is not a framework, it is a JavaScript library. jQuery was used to create many advanced features in web applications. However, it lacked data binding and DOM updation.
Then, AngularJS came with the new concept of SPA and two-way data binding.
However, AngularJS had many problems of its own because it was new to the software industry. You could not find much AngularJS support at the beginning, which caused much confusion among developers.
To address this problem the AngularJS team took a tough and bold decision. They created a new web framework named Angular, which is backward compatible with AngularJS. I loved the move from AngularJS to Angular. Angular is easy to learn and it is comparatively much simpler to create an application on it.
However, many enterprise applications were created using AngularJS and many of those created on AngularJS are still running in production.
Why You Need the Update and Tech Support
Further complicating the issue, the Google team recently announced the EOL (end of life) stage for AngularJS. This means you will never again receive an update or tech support from the Google team for AngularJS. They recommend moving applications to Angular (v2+).
You have developed a web application using AngularJS and it is running on the production server without any issues. So, the first question that comes to every developer’s and admin’s mind is: ‘Why do I need to worry about the EOL of AngularJS?’ Here is where you need to understand one thing.
AngularJS versions 1.3 and later do not support Internet Explorer 8 or earlier. Before the arrival of Google Chrome, Internet Explorer was a popular browser among end-users. So, the lack of browser support creates many problems for developers and end customers when they use applications developed with AngularJS.
Today, it may be true that your AngularJS application runs smoothly. However, we can not predict what will happen in the future, there is no guarantee that the application will not go down or malfunction.
Moving Forward – Alternatives
Let’s say you update a few JS libraries and your AngularJS web application uses those libraries. In such a case, there is always a possibility that your AngularJS application breaks down if the new update to the JS library is backward compatible with AngularJS. If this were to hjappen, you would definitely need an AngularJS support team to address the problem quickly.
Many developers have already voiced concerns that they are unable to fix this issue for the past two weeks or one month. You can find such comments in the GitHub/developer-community forum. If your AngularJS application is in production, you can not afford to spend one week or one month to fix the issue. So, here you need AngularJS support.
There are so many vendors in the software industry that are offering AngularJS support. AngularJS support includes help for issues like new browser version support, JS library compatibility issues, CVE (common vulnerabilities and exposures), and more. You can find those vendors by making a quick search online. You can pick the AngularJS support team that is right for you based on your needs and budget.
Summary
In the software industry, we use so many programming languages, databases, tools, servers softwares, and frameworks to develop applications on a daily basis. Any software component (language, database, etc.) that is involved in the application development process will have bugs and need to be tweaked occasionally to improve its performance. Thus, updates to these software components are to be done periodically to avoid security issues.
Previously, updates to software components used to be released once a year or once in two years. Today, we see so many new updates released every week or month. So, updates are very much needed for the software component.
Like updates, tech support for the software component is also a necessity because sometimes application developers are unable to solve this issues or bugs they encounter in a software component or create a solution by themselves. Many organizations offer tech support for the software components we use in application development. Thus, updates and tech support play a vital role in the application development lifecycle.
AngularJS has now reached its EOL stage. The Google team officially declared the EOL of AngularJS and have recommended updating the AngularJS application to Angular (V2+). However, migrating complex applications developed using AngularJS can be a big problem and will end up costing companies many man hours.
To address this gap, many third vendors are there in the market to provide updates and tech support for AngularJS. It is highly advisable that companies planning on making this shift use these services to avoid more costs to the company.
Source: Plato Data Intelligence: Platodata.ai
