Keeping the page interactive while a View Transition is running

When using View Transitions you’ll notice the page becomes unresponsive to clicks while a View Transition is running. […] This happens because of the ::view-transition pseudo element – the one that contains all animated snapshots – gets overlayed on top of the document and captures all the clicks.

::view-transition /* 👈 Captures all the clicks! */
└─ ::view-transition-group(root)
   └─ ::view-transition-image-pair(root)
      ├─ ::view-transition-old(root)
      └─ ::view-transition-new(root)

The trick? It’s that sneaky little pointer-events property! Slapping it directly on the :view-transition allows us to click “under” the pseudo-element, meaning the full page is interactive even while the view transition is running.

::view-transition {
  pointer-events: none;
}

I always, always, always forget about pointer-events, so thanks to Bramus for posting this little snippet. I also appreciate the additional note about removing the :root element from participating in the view transition:

:root {
  view-transition-name: none;
}

He quotes the spec noting the reason why snapshots do not respond to hit-testing:

Elements participating in a transition need to skip painting in their DOM location because their image is painted in the corresponding ::view-transition-new() pseudo-element instead. Similarly, hit-testing is skipped because the element’s DOM location does not correspond to where its contents are rendered.

Keeping the page interactive while a View Transition is running originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.