The React View Transitions and Activity APIs are experimental features that aim to simplify adding animations to web applications.
The View Transitions API optimizes performance by improving the native API to support the virtual DOM in React.
The Activity API offers a performant way to pre-render or hide UI elements while preserving their state.
To use these APIs, developers need knowledge of JavaScript, experience in building web apps with React, and Node.js v21 installed.
The View Transition API handles transition animations automatically behind the scenes.
Configuring support for React experimental features involves installing the experimental versions of react and react-dom packages.
The tutorial covers animating elements on page transitions, shared element transitions, reordering items in a list, animating from Suspense content, customizing animations, pre-rendering, and visually hiding UI parts.
Developers can customize animations by setting CSS transition properties and using transition classes.
The shared element transition involves adding unique names to components for smooth transitions between pages.
The addTransitionType API allows animations based on transition causes, providing more control over animations triggered in React.