Angular is a great framework and well suited for developing large applications built to get the highest performance possible on the web. But sometimes we, as developers, end up doing things that result in a poorly performing app.
Delve into our Angular UI test automation’s remarkable impact, slashing a customer’s manual testing by 90%.
Most of you may relate to the reaction in the picture shown below when we get feedback on our application not performing well!
Well, we need to follow some best practices to keep our Angular performance optimization boosted from the word GO instead of taking it to later stages of the development to avoid this situation. In today’s blog, let’s explore those things that we should take into consideration.
Why performance optimization is necessary
According to research, if the application’s load time is more than 3 seconds, the user tends to drift away from the application and switch to other competitive applications and this can be a big loss to the business or a person who put in a lot of efforts to bring that to life.
Sometimes, most of us get lost in the rapid development phase and lose out on taking care of the performance issues, leaving those for later to address. Well, from my experience provisioning in the later stage comes with limitations and challenges. The impact of this is on the end user’s experience. So, the performance and optimization of any application is necessary, which improves the application’s load time and increases performance.
Let us take a look at troubleshooting performance optimization issues.
How to solve performance optimization issues
The first step is to analyze the application and find the slow-performing areas.
There are two bottleneck areas that mostly affect application performance –
- Load Performance – How long does it take the browser to download your application, load it into the browser, parse the JavaScript, and display it to your user?
- Runtime Performance – How fast does your Angular application perform after loading and bootstrapping?
Meet the Angular doctor!
Performance optimization is not a linear process. Repeat these three steps until you achieve the desired level of performance. Simply run more iteration cycles and optimize areas to get better performance.
Methods to optimize the load performance
The areas to focus on when trying to improve load time
- Optimizing the size of the main bundle
- Optimizing load of static content
- Optimizing the load of API resources
Making the main bundle as small as possible will affect the load time of your application (of the initial route). As the main bundle size increases, the time required for downloading, parsing, and executing JS grows rapidly. If you only do this and manage to keep your main bundle small, you won’t have load time issues.
Optimizing the size of the main bundle using lazy loading
Lazy loading solves this problem by loading modules only when they are needed. It works by first loading only the necessary parts of an application and then deferring the loading of non-essential parts until the user requests them. This can help reduce the initial size of the main bundle, which can improve the overall performance of the website.
When the application starts, the AppModule and HomeModule is eagerly loaded, whereas the EmployeeModule and ReportsModule load only when the user clicks on a link, which is called lazy loading.
These are the various bundles in an Angular CLI application.
- main.js: your application code and everything you have imported
- vendor.js: third-party code that your application depends on
- polyfills.js: polyfills that enable the use of new features in older environments
- runtime.js: utility code used by Webpack to load code at runtime
Preloading modules
Preloading modules is a technique for improving app performance by loading some or all your app’s modules in the background while the user interacts with the app.
When the user navigates to a different section of the application, the necessary modules are already loaded, reducing the time it takes to display the content.
The Router has two preloading options.
- No Preloading – This is the default strategy, in which modules are loaded only when the user navigates to the appropriate route.
- Preload All – When the application is loaded, this will preload all lazy-loaded modules in the background.
Overall, preloading modules in Angular can be a useful technique for improving application performance, but you must select the best strategy based on your application’s requirements and user behaviour.
This story will be continued! Write to us with your thoughts about this blog and stay tuned for Part 2! Meanwhile, you can visit us at Nitor Infotech.
