"AngularJS 2.0 is a framework for mobile apps" says the AngularJS team. The framework will continue to be supported for desktops, but the primary focus will be on getting the mobile bit right. The goals also include support for EcmaScript 6 along with a transpiler (since browsers don't support ES6 yet).
The changes planned are outlined in an article "AngularJS 2.0" along with links to design documents to elicit feedback from developers.
A brief description about the proposed changes are as follows -
- Support for ES6 along with Traceur transpiler. The developer will have the choice to continue writing in ES5.
- Faster Change Detection
- Instrumention via Angular-wide logging service, diary.js
- Better modularity
- Simpler Dependency Injection - declarative instead of imperative, module loading through ES6 Modules, lazily load parts of JS through child injectors. Most of this design is already implemented.
- Templating and Directive improvements - Simpler Directive API, integration with other component frameworks using web standards, improved performance and enabling IDEs to analyze and validate templates
- Better Touch animations using native features of browsers supported by fallback; targeting at least 60+ FPS performance)
- Improved Routing - Stage based routing, Integration with authentication and authorization, optionally preserving state of some views
- Better Persistence - support for "always offline" mode with sync to server, especially useful for mobile
- Support only modern browsers that auto-update - Chrome, FireFox, Opera, Safari and IE11. On mobile, Chrome on Android, iOS 6+, Windows Phone 8+ and Firefox Mobile. There "may" be support for older versions of Android.
Most changes are in design and prototyping stage and the final release might look different from what is proposed right now. You can provide feedback through any of Angular's channels.