April 13, 2024
If you build things with Angular, you probably already know that you need to keep up with the framework as it evolves over time. Well, in this post, I’m going to help you do just that. We’re going to take a look at the new HostAttributeToken injection token and why you may want to use it. In this post we’ll use an example of an existing button component with inputs and we’ll replace them with the inject() function and the HostAttributeToken class. Alright, let’s get to it!
April 07, 2024
Signals are changing the way we do many things in Angular. You’ve likely encountered Observables if you’ve worked in the framework for very long. They’re a pretty handy way to stream values emitted over time to subscribers providing a way to react to these events as needed. But often when using them, we also need to trigger Change Detection in order to properly update items within views. With Signals, Observables are not being replaced, they still have use cases, but we can actually transform them into signals when needed. This can help with Change Detection and can often simplify the code overall. In this post we’ll convert a couple of Observables from an existing example over to Signals. Alright, let’s check it out.
March 29, 2024
Have you ever tried to animate an element to an unknown height with CSS alone? If so, you’ve probably found that it’s not as easy as it seems. To animate a CSS height, you need to animate to a specific value, one hundred percent and auto both won’t work. You can transition max-height but this means that you probably need to use a random arbitrary value that may not work in all cases. It’s just weird and may not even work depending on what you’re trying to do. Well, this is something that is available with Angular animations. In this post, I’ll show you how. Alright, let’s get to it.
March 24, 2024
In newer versions of Angular, a pretty significant change is coming with Signals. If you work with Angular and haven’t heard about them yet, you’re in the right place. In this post you’ll learn what they are, at a high level, and you’ll learn how to use the new signal-based inputs along with the new output function in components. We’re going to take a look at an example using the existing @Input and @Output decorators and we’ll convert it over to signals and the output function. I’ve been using signals a lot lately and I can assure you, It’s a change. Definitely a different way of thinking. Alright, let’s get to it!
March 15, 2024
If you’ve spent any time creating animations in Angular, you may have noticed that the animations added within component metadata run sequentially. Meaning, they’ll run in the order they are added within the array. Well, sometimes this works fine, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, we need multiple animations to run in parallel to orchestrate them properly. Well, good news for us, Angular has a solution for this. In this post I’ll show you why, and I’ll show how you can animate things in parallel. Alright, let’s get to it.
March 08, 2024
When did you last need use an animation feature in your application? It’s something you probably do on a regular basis, if not daily. With Angular, we have a powerful animation framework that we can leverage to do all sorts of crazy things. Sometimes, when using these animation features, we need to do things when the animation starts, or when it ends, or both. Well, good news for us – we have this ability in Angular.
March 01, 2024
I work in Angular every day and I build things that need to be animated or transitioned when interacted with. And, because of this, I’m thankful for the Animations module. There are so many useful features available that make life much easier. We’re going to look at two of these features in this post. First, we’re going to use the query() function to find and animate several items at once. Then, we’ll use the stagger() function to create a delay between the animations running on each of these items. Alright, let’s get to it!
February 23, 2024
As you probably already know, when you build apps today, you’ll likely need to use animations and transitions to enhance the UI where possible. With Angular’s animation framework we have access to some pretty powerful features which allow us to do things that may not be possible with CSS alone. In this post we’re going to look at a little, fun and crazy example using the Angular keyframes() animation function. Alright, let’s get to it!
February 16, 2024
When building things with Angular have you ever found yourself with the need to animate mark-up as it physically enters and leaves the DOM? This isn’t possible right? Actually, it is. In Angular we have access to a powerful animation framework. It’s packed with many features that just aren’t possible, at least at the moment, with CSS by itself. In this post we’re going to dive into one such feature, the ability to animate mark-up as it’s added and removed from the document with the :enter and :leave aliases. Alright, let’s get to it!
February 09, 2024
When you build stuff in Angular, you probably pretty quickly discover that you want to add animations and transitions. They are an important aspect to any application now-a-days right? They help make the overall user experience feel nicer and can help to make it more intuitive too. Many times, we can use CSS to handle these animations, but Angular has a powerful animation framework baked right in that allows us to do a lot more than what we can with plain ol’ CSS. Alright, let’s get to it!
February 02, 2024
When creating a modal or pop-up in an Angular application, accessibility can be easy to overlook. If you’re developing an app but you’re able to see, hear, and easily access and use different devices, it’s probably not top of mind for you. But it’s important. Our goal should be to make our apps available to as many people as possible. Making them accessible helps do just that. In this post, we’ll work on an existing demo application that we’ve created over several posts focused on the Angular CDK Overlay. We’ll take the example and make it accessible using ARIA roles and attributes, managing focus, and adding proper keyboard functionality. Alright, let’s get to it!
January 26, 2024
When using the Angular CDK Overlay module, you will likely want to transition the opening and closing of the overlay content. It’s something that seems like it should be pretty easy and straightforward but it’s actually a little tricky. It can’t really be transitioned with CSS only because it’s markup that gets added into and removed from the document. It’s not a simple style or class change. We need to leverage Angular animations to make it work well. In this post I’ll show you why and I’ll show you how to make animations work for your overlays. Alright, let’s get to it!
January 19, 2024
In the Angular CDK there are a lot of cool, exciting, and helpful features. And the Overlay Module is one of the most powerful. It’s used to create things like dialogs, tooltips, menus, custom dropdowns and more. I’ve already created a couple of posts on the Overlay Module, one where I cover the basics of setting them up, and another where I demonstrate different ways that they can be positioned within the viewport. If you’re unfamiliar with these concepts and haven’t read those, you should do that before rreading this one because we will build off the examples that we created in them. Here, we’ll be focused on how we want an overlay to react when scrolling the container it’s positioned within.
January 12, 2024
The Angular CDK Overlay is a handy, powerful, and fairly complex feature that can be used to quickly create modals and pop-ups. In my previous post about the CDK Overlay, I covered the basics needed to create both a modal using the global position strategy and a pop-up using the flexible connected to position strategy. I’d suggest that if you’re unfamiliar with the Overlay module at all, you go check out that post first because the demos in this video will build off the examples we built, and concepts that we learned. In this post we are going to learn about different ways to control how a pop-up gets positioned when using a connected overlay because there’s a lot to it and it’s all pretty cool.
January 05, 2024
When building apps in Angular, you will likely need to trigger a modal or pop-up at some point. Sometimes this is easy and can be done with some simple CSS, but other times, it may be more complicated. You may need to append markup to the bottom of your document so that it can be placed on top of everything else. Or maybe depending on scroll position, a pop-up will need to open upward instead of downward. There’s lot’s of possible scenarios where you may need more than what’s capable with CSS by itself and that’s where the CDK Overlay Module comes into play.
December 29, 2023
If you’re using dynamically created components in Angular, you’ve probably found it difficult to pass information between the parent and child components when needed. You need to provide the info in the parent and then inject it within the child component. While it’s not necessarily difficult to do, it results in a lot of extra boilerplate code. It would be so much better if we could just use the `@Input` decorator like we’re used to. Well, guess what? Angular supports doing this exact thing as of version sixteen. In this post, I’ll show you how. Alright, let’s get to it.
December 22, 2023
Centering items with HTML and CSS used to be pretty tough to do. Well, it’s not anymore. There are many different ways to do it now. And that’s a good thing because we may need different options in different scenarios. In this video we’ll look at three of my favorite ways to center items, We’ll use positioning, then we’ll use flexbox, and lastly, we’ll use my go-to CSS grid. Alright, let’s get to it.
December 15, 2023
A focus trap is a very important accessibility feature within a web application. In this post I’ll first help you understand what it is, then why it’s important, and finally I’ll show how to quickly and easily add the concept within your Angular apps where needed. And, it’s pretty easy thanks to the Angular CDK. Alright, let’s get to it.
December 08, 2023
We now have a new search element in HTML. It should be used when adding any sort of search functionality within a website or web app. Its purpose is to provide the proper semantics for search functionality within the browser. In this post I’ll show you how to use it in a couple of common search scenarios. Ok, let’s get to it.
December 01, 2023
In Angular 17 we have a couple of new ways to include styles within our components. In this post we’ll take a close look at these new features, and we’ll learn how to use them. Alright, let’s get to it!