Chromium View Transitions: A Complete Implementation Deep-Dive

This technical documentation explains how Chromium implements View Transitions by coordinating four distinct architectural layers: Blink, the cc compositor, the Viz service, and CSS animations. It details the lifecycle of a transition, beginning with the JavaScript API and progressing through a seven-phase state machine that manages DOM snapshots. The system utilizes a specialized pseudo-element tree to render visual changes while bridging the gap between the main thread and the compositor via ViewTransitionRequest objects. Furthermore, the text explores how cross-document navigations are handled through state serialization and the browser process. Ultimately, the architecture relies on SharedElementResourceIDs to synchronize live and cached textures, ensuring smooth visual continuity during page updates.