Angular Component Libraries: Top Picks for Web Development

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photo by Creative Art

According to several web development surveys, Angular is rightly so placed among the best web frameworks. The platform offers a full package for front-end developers. Rich with features for mobile, desktop, and web apps development.

There is a variety of component libraries that further enhance the Angular experience.

What are component libraries?

Component libraries contain pre-coded pieces of software or pre-designed parts of the websites. Developers can use them directly in their applications, not having to code every little detail from scratch.

Most UI component libraries also have customizable features. So designers have options either to customize or to make new components.

Component libraries could be very useful when working in a team, and large projects with many developers can be made easier to control and follow the process of web development.

Angular is a vast platform, with many features and utilities. Having the option to use an external component library could help reduce some costs in the development process.

Here is a list of some of the best UI component libraries you could incorporate into your Angular projects:

  1. Angular Material

Developed by the creators of the platform it is the original components library. It can offer a variety of components for layout design, toolbar, navigation menu, creation of pop-ups, building blocks and tables, and many more. It can provide great assistance to developers who like to use customized tools and widgets.

  • NG-Bootstrap

This component library was created back in 2015. It can offer Angular widgets built by using Bootstrap 4CSS. For a developer to use them, it isn’t required to know anything more than Angular and Bootstrap. 

Carousel, modal, datepicker, typehead, and popover are some of the components available in the library.

Unfortunately, due to belated updates, NG-Bootstrap’s popularity decreased over time.

  • NGX-Bootstrap

NGS-Bootstrap library is a mixture of Angular’s functionalities and Bootstrap’s features. It offers high performance and flexibility.

Most of the time, developers use this library to create scalable apps with Angular. Most developers prefer this library over NG-Bootstrap for animation support and more sortable components. It also gets updated more often.

  • Onsen UI

With Onsen UI, you can build HTML5 hybrid mobile apps using its open-source collection of UI components. It offers a wide range of Angular components that are useful for making multi-platform web applications.

It gives developers access to ready-to-use UI components such as toolbars, forms, side menu, and dialogs. It is very easy to set up and use.

  • Prime NG

Some claim it to be the best Angular UI component library.  It provides many themes and customizable Angular CLI app templates. 

All widgets are open source and can be found on GitHub.

Prime Ng has a variety of UI components, including alerts for messaging, file uploads, and customized graphing tools. This library is ideal for creating touch-responsive mobile apps.

  • Vaadin Components

The Vaadin UI components can help when creating modern Java applications. The library is built according to Web Components standards.

Angular UI components are combined with polymer elements to create professional web and mobile applications. Vaadin is ideal for working with teams enabling efficient code sharing.

Out of all the above-mentioned component libraries, it is safe to say that Angular Material is the most popular among web developers. All the polls show it to be so.

When comparing NG-bootstrap and NGX-bootstrap, they probably share a similar level of popularity. But if we take into consideration the more frequent updates that NGX receives, it should somewhat gain preference over NG.

If you need a rich data table with sorting and filtering and nested table structures, PrimeNG is a good option.

Onsen UI is excellent for rich mobile apps and combines very good with Monaca, which is a platform for developing hybrid applications

Vaadin is the least popular of all above, but combining Angular with polymer components is perfect for creating a smooth user-friendly experience.