Post I wrote a while ago for Chrome for Developers, about some misconceptions about View Transitions that are making rounds.
The View Transition API is a web development game changer. Whether your website is single or multi-page, this powerful API lets you create seamless transitions between views, resulting in native-like experiences that captivate users. Currently available in Chrome, with same document view transitions soon to be available in Safari.
With more and more people starting to look into the View Transition API, it’s time to debunk some misconceptions.
The following misconceptions are covered:
- Misconception 1: The View Transition API takes screenshots
- → Nopes, they’re snapshots
- Misconception 2: Capturing more than one element results in multiple view transitions running
- → While there are multiple snapshot-pairs in that case, they are all part of the same View Transition.
- Misconception 3: You can’t implement view transitions because of browser support
- → Progressive Enhancement is a thing 😉
- Misconception 4: View transitions break incremental rendering
- → Nothing has changed there. Browsers still use their existing heuristics to determine when to do a first render.
- Misconception 5: The snapshotting process is slow or expensive
- → At most you’ll lose two frames.
- Bonus Misconception: It’s the View Transitions [sic] API
- → It’s the View Transition API (singular form)
Especially that bonus misconception is one of my pet peeves. As of last week MDN uses the correct term (issue), so there’re no reason to keep saying the wrong thing 🙂