A developer write-up this month flagged a side effect of View Transitions, the browser feature that animates changes on a page (an image growing bigger, a list re-sorting, a table changing order). While the animation is running, the browser lays an invisible layer over the whole screen. Anything underneath it cannot be clicked.
Why this matters on a real site
Most small business sites use animation somewhere. A product gallery that opens an image. A filter on a menu or price list that reshuffles the results. A "sort by" control on a directory. If any of those were built using this feature, then for the length of the animation your visitor is looking at a page they cannot interact with.
On a fast, short animation nobody notices. On a slow one, or on an older phone where things run sluggishly, people notice. What they experience is not "a nice transition", it is "I tapped the button and nothing happened". Then they tap again, or they leave. If the blocked button happens to be your enquiry form, your call button or your add-to-cart, that is a real cost and it will not show up anywhere obvious. Your analytics will just show people dropping off.
The fix is short. Two lines of styling tell the browser to let clicks pass through the invisible layer, and there is a newer approach that limits the animation to just the part of the page being changed rather than the whole screen. Neither is a rebuild. It is a small correction.
Worth saying plainly: if your site has no animated transitions of this kind, this changes nothing for you. It got attention because it is the sort of bug that looks like nothing in testing (a developer clicking around deliberately will rarely hit the window) and only bites real visitors who tap quickly and impatiently.
What to do
Open your site on your phone. Use any filter, gallery or sort control you have, and try tapping something else the instant it starts moving. If nothing responds for a second or two, you have found it.
If you are unsure, send your developer the phrase "View Transitions and pointer-events" next time you speak. They will know immediately whether it applies to your build.
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