Starting Angular 2 development on windows

[Trevor Hawes]

Is there anywhere a simple step by step how-to to tell us what needs to be installed (and to which folder) , what to run and where to save things etc, which IDE to use and how, step-by-step to build a simple app in angular2 on windows (10)?

The docs on https://angular.io/docs/js/latest/quickstart.html etc are not at all helpful as they dont tell us which folder to install in and where to get everything from and doesnt seem to be referring to windows. We cant even get started without a very ultra-simple beginners guide as all this is totally new. (Never used node, npm, git, angular etc and come from a JS, HTML, CSS , PHP, MySQL background)

[Vern Jensen]

I was new to NPM until recently as well. I took the time to learn to use it, and can say it's totally the way to go. 

I use Visual Studio 2013 (note: I recommend 2015 as, in a future update, they'll be fixing some crashing issues) and while there were some difficulties getting going initially, I like the environment a lot now. However it's really your call what you use. You can use Visual Studio Code, which is a misleading name, because it's really a completely different tool, just renamed.

Anyway, back to NPM.... Visual Studio comes with "NuGet" integration which we used initally, but NuGet does NOT have Angular 2 alphas. This meant that I couldn't stay up-to-date with the latest Angular 2 alpha releases, which is a no-no. 

So *definitely* learn NPM. It's not that hard, and once you learn the few simple commands, it's very easy to stay up-to-date with the latest versions of everything, including not only the Angular 2 alphas, but ALSO the TypeScript definitiions files for everything. (Learn to use the tsd tool too!)

Yes, there are new tools to learn, but trust me, it's worth learning them.

I don't believe you need to learn Node.js to get started, nor GIT. You can get started with the Angular 2 tutorial just with NPM and a little TypeScript knowledge. (And again, trust me here: TypeScript is also totally worth learning. Light years better than JavaScript.)

After you learn NPM, try the tutorial again. If you run into problems post here, I'll see if I can help you out.

[Vern Jensen]

Also, I take back what I said about Node.js. It might be that it's required... but if so, I've been using it without realizing it. I guess I just followed the instructions to install it (whatever the tutorial told me to do) and haven't had to understand it or mess with it since.

[o_O Bille]

Hi Trevor.

You know that Angular2 is not even in beta? its still alpha release. 
Anyway, you dont need to install anything. Its a library just like jquery. The angular library is hosted on Google like jquery, and there is a lite version of jquery inside angular.
Here is a very simple webapp : http://www.w3schools.com/angular/angular_application.asp, just fire it up on any server.

For you question: an angular app for windows 10, you mean universal app, "for" or "on"? You can find many tutorials for windows, both angular, typescript and so on at microsoft academy.
https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/developing-universal-windows-apps-with-html-and-javascript-jump-start-8344?l=qWp1uOEz_3204984382

You can use Node.js as a webserver, also combining it with jasmine.js for testing. I recommend you wait with that part until you have read more about angular itself.


//Bille

www.elitenet.dk