AngularJS end of life

[Tysio]

Dear Developers, 

Probably some of you know that AngularJS is out of support since January 1 2022. 
Did ServiceNow officially confirm which framework will be used in the future for developing widgets? 
Should developers start learning Angular (typescript one) or the new solutions would be based on eg. React.js? 

Kind Regards 
Wojtek

[Daniel Draes]

As much as this might be true for the 'wild wild web' out there, it is not for ServiceNow.
We have decided to create our own UI Framework - which is in a lot things similar, but not alike. Our new framework is called Seismic and you can find the documentation around it here.
Guides | ServiceNow Developers

[David Arbour]

Even when ServiceNow is done supporting AngularJS, widgets as they are today will need to be maintained for the foreseeable future. There may be no new widgets created after 3 years, but there will still be widgets to maintain.

To answer your question about the later version of Angular, ServiceNow has no plans to adopt that technology. Over time I expect the new UI Builder to replace everything that is now driven by AngularJS. So in short, learn the new UI Builder.

[Willem]

Hi all,

Adding this for people that do not know the difference between AngularJS and Angular (or did not know there was a difference):

This article sums it up in a clear way:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/difference-between-angularjs-and-angular

Sr. No.	Key	AngularJS	Angular
1	Architecture	AngularJS works on MVC, Model View Controller Design. Here View shows the information present in the model and controller processes the information.	Angular uses components and directives. Here component is directive with a template.
2	Language	AngularJS code is written in javascript.	Angular code is written in typescript.
3	Mobile	AngularJS code is not mobile friendly.	Angular develped applications are mobile browser friendly.
4	Expression syntax	{{}} are used to bind data between view and model. Special methods, ng-bind can also be used to do the same.	() and [] attributes are used to bind data between view and model.
5	Dependency Injection	DI is not used.	Hiearchical DI system is used in Angular.
6	Routing	@routeProvider.when, then are used to provide routing information.	@Route configuration is used to define routing information.
7	Management	AngularJS project is difficult to manage with increasing size of the source code.	Angular code is better structured, is easy to create and manage bigger applications.

Perhaps it would be a good idea if the docs included that AngularJS is out of support and for how long ServiceNow is (planning on) supporting it.

f.e. in this docs article:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/sandiego-servicenow-platform/page/build/service-portal/concept/ad...

[Willem · Accepted solution]

Hi Tysio,

I found the official statement of ServiceNow on this, they will maintain their own version of AngularJS:

Community Members, this post is to call attention to the important info in this Now Support Knowledge Base article (KB0965345):

ServiceNow customers will continue to be able use, build, and deploy AngularJS experiences without any impact, even after Google ends Long Term Support (LTS) on December 31, 2021. 

At ServiceNow, we will maintain our own version of AngularJS in support of all ServiceNow experiences and products that depend upon it.

Reference: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=e423eddadbad3c5011762183ca961...

[David Arbour]

Great info. Support for legacy widgets will have to remain in the platform. What happens 5 years from now if an existing widget needs to be updated? Developers have to have a way to update legacy elements. ServiceNow will likely stop adding features in the future, but that's completely different than removing support altogether.