::view-transition-old

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The ::view-transition-old CSS pseudo-element represents the "old" view state of a view transition — a static screenshot of the old view, before the transition.

During a view transition, ::view-transition-old is included in the associated pseudo-element tree as explained in The view transition process, provided there's an "old" view state to represent. It is only ever a child of a ::view-transition-image-pair, and never has any children.

It is a replaced element, and therefore can be manipulated with properties such as object-fit and object-position. It has natural dimensions equal to the content's size.

The following default styling is included in the UA stylesheet:

css

@keyframes -ua-view-transition-fade-out {
  to {
    opacity: 0;
  }
}

html::view-transition-old(*) {
  position: absolute;
  inset-block-start: 0;
  inline-size: 100%;
  block-size: auto;

  animation-name: -ua-view-transition-fade-out;
  animation-duration: inherit;
  animation-fill-mode: inherit;
}

Note: Additional view transition style sheet styles are also setup to animate ::view-transition-old. These are dynamically generated during the view transition; see the specification setup transition pseudo-elements and update pseudo-element styles sections for more details.

Syntax

css

::view-transition-old(<pt-name-selector>) {
  /* ... */
}

<pt-name-selector> can be one of the following values:

*

Causes the pseudo-element to match all view transition groups.

root

Causes the pseudo-element to match the default root view transition group created by the user agent to contain the view transition for the overall page, meaning any element not assigned to its own specific view transition group via the view-transition-name property.

<custom-ident>

Causes the pseudo-element to match a specific view transition group created by assigning the given <custom-ident> to an element via the view-transition-name property.

Examples

css

figcaption {
  view-transition-name: figure-caption;
}

@keyframes grow-x {
  from {
    transform: scaleX(0);
  }
  to {
    transform: scaleX(1);
  }
}

@keyframes shrink-x {
  from {
    transform: scaleX(1);
  }
  to {
    transform: scaleX(0);
  }
}

::view-transition-old(figure-caption),
::view-transition-new(figure-caption) {
  height: auto;
  right: 0;
  left: auto;
  transform-origin: right center;
}

::view-transition-old(figure-caption) {
  animation: 0.25s linear both shrink-x;
}

::view-transition-new(figure-caption) {
  animation: 0.25s 0.25s linear both grow-x;
}

Specifications

Specification
CSS View Transitions Module Level 1
# ::view-transition-old

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also