Lot of web developers I’m seeing online are going all in on cross-document view transitions. Chalk me up as someone who doesn’t like fun (a fair assessment) but I really can’t see myself using this anytime soon. It just doesn’t feel… genuine. I can’t really describe it any better than this. It’s as if the site is trying to be something that it’s not (a native app, verses a website).
The immediate transition to a new page may seem like a bad user experience, but I don’t think it is. The transitions don’t hide a page load, so you’re still waiting for that, and I’ve come to expect that the page will be shown to me when it’s ready. Making me wait while a transition is playing, no matter how short it is, just makes it feel like you’re wasting my time.
Anyway, that’s the feeling at the moment. Maybe I’ll come around.
In the meantime, it would be nice if browsers have a preference of turning these off. Having it controlled via the global accessibilities settings is insufficient, as transitions in native apps are occasionally helpful.