@angular/material

What is @angular/material?

The @angular/material package is a UI component library for Angular applications that implements Google's Material Design. It provides a wide range of reusable UI components that are designed to be efficient, accessible, and visually appealing. These components help developers build cohesive, attractive, and functional web applications with less effort.

What are @angular/material's main functionalities?

Form Controls

Form controls are essential for collecting input from the user. @angular/material provides various form controls like input fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and select dropdowns. The code sample demonstrates how to import and use the MatInputModule for text inputs.

import {MatInputModule} from '@angular/material/input';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatInputModule]
})
export class MyModule {}

Navigation

Navigation components help users move through the application. This includes menus, side navigation, and toolbars. The code sample shows how to import the MatToolbarModule to use a Material Design toolbar in your application.

import {MatToolbarModule} from '@angular/material/toolbar';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatToolbarModule]
})
export class MyModule {}

Layout

Layout components assist in structuring the view of an application. @angular/material offers grid lists, cards, and tabs to help organize content. The code sample illustrates the use of MatGridListModule for creating grid layouts.

import {MatGridListModule} from '@angular/material/grid-list';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatGridListModule]
})
export class MyModule {}

Buttons & Indicators

Buttons and indicators are used for actions and status feedback. This category includes buttons, progress bars, and spinner indicators. The code sample demonstrates importing MatButtonModule to use Material Design buttons.

import {MatButtonModule} from '@angular/material/button';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatButtonModule]
})
export class MyModule {}

Other packages similar to @angular/material

ngx-bootstrap

ngx-bootstrap provides Bootstrap components powered by Angular. It's similar to @angular/material in providing a set of reusable UI components but is based on Bootstrap's design system rather than Material Design.

primeng

PrimeNG is a collection of rich UI components for Angular. It offers a wide range of widgets and is comparable to @angular/material in terms of providing components for form controls, tables, overlays, and more. PrimeNG is known for its extensive component library beyond what @angular/material offers.

ng-zorro-antd

NG-ZORRO is an Angular UI library based on Ant Design. Similar to @angular/material, it provides a comprehensive suite of UI components that are designed to be modular, lightweight, and easy to use. It differs in its design philosophy, following Ant Design principles instead of Material Design.

README

Material Design for Angular 2

This is the home for the Angular team's Material Design components built on top of Angular 2.

Quick links

Google group, Contributing, Plunker Template

Getting started

See our Getting Started Guide if you're building your first project with Angular Material 2.

Project status

Angular Material 2 is currently in alpha and under active development. During alpha, breaking API and behavior changes will be occurring regularly.

Check out our directory of design documents for more insight into our process.

If you'd like to contribute, you must follow our contributing guidelines. You can look through the issues (which should be up-to-date on who is working on which features and which pieces are blocked) and make a comment. Also see our Good for community contribution label.

High level items planned for September 2016:

• Work on Angular core towards 2.0.0 final
• Preparing for conferences (Angular Connect and ng-europe)
• Final features for dialog
• Initial version of snackbar.
• Additional behaviors for menu, start design for select.
• Finalize high-level design details for data-table.

Feature status:

Feature	Status	Docs	Issue
button	Available	README	-
cards	Available	README	-
checkbox	Available	README	-
radio	Available	README	-
input	Available	README	-
sidenav	Available	README	-
toolbar	Available	README	-
list	Available	README	#107
grid-list	Available	README	-
icon	Available	README	-
progress-circle	Available	README	-
progress-bar	Available	README	-
tabs	Available	README	-
slide-toggle	Available	README	-
button-toggle	Available	README	-
slider	Available	README	-
menu	Initial version, needs enhancements	README	#119
tooltip	Initial version, needs enhancements	README	-
ripples	Available, but needs to be applied	README	#108
dialog	Started, not yet ready for release	-	#114
snackbar / toast	Proof-of-concept	-	#115
select	Design started	-	#118
textarea	Not started	-	#546
autocomplete	Not started	-	#117
chips	Not started	-	#120
theming	In master, not released, some bugs	Guide	#123
prod build	Not started	-	-
docs site	UX design and tooling in progress	-	-
typography	Not started	-	#205
layout	Not started	-	-
fab speed-dial	Not started	-	#860
fab toolbar	Not started	-	-
bottom-sheet	Not started	-	-
bottom-nav	Not started	-	#408
virtual-repeat	Not started	-	#823
datepicker	Not started	-	#675
data-table	Not started	-	#581
stepper	Not started	-	#508

"Available" means that the components or feature is published and available for use, but may still be missing some behaviors or polish.

The goal of Angular Material

Our goal is to build a set of high-quality UI components built with Angular 2 and TypeScript, following the Material Design spec. These components will serve as an example of how to write Angular code following best practices.

What do we mean by "high-quality"?

• Internationalized and accessible so that all users can use them.
• Straightforward APIs that don't confuse developers.
• Behave as expected across a wide variety of use-cases without bugs.
• Behavior is well-tested with both unit and integration tests.
• Customizable within the bounds of the Material Design specification.
• Performance cost is minimized.
• Code is clean and well-documented to serve as an example for Angular devs.

Browser and screen reader support

Angular Material supports the most recent two versions of all major browsers: Chrome (including Android), Firefox, Safari (including iOS), and IE11 / Edge

We also aim for great user experience with the following screen readers:

• NVDA and JAWS with IE / FF / Chrome (on Windows).
• VoiceOver with Safari on iOS and Safari / Chrome on OSX.
• TalkBack with Chrome on Android.