Google bringing Material Design animations to the web

Google has been busy pushing out Android 5.0 Lollipop and Material Design to all of their phones and apps, but that is not where it all stops. The upcoming Navigation Transitions API for Chrome promises to bring much of the same Material Design animations and transitions to the web.

The information can be found in the following video from the Chrome Dev Summit 2014, the recording is from November 19th and packed full of great new things that Google is working on. Of course, the video is also eight hours long, so you are going to want to dive into the 54th minute to get to what we are discussing today.

With all of the power of coding tools like jquery and AJAX, much of the same animations and transitions can be had today, but at the cost of complicated coding. Google’s new Activity Transitions API brings many of the same graphical abilities as existing tools, packaging them into code that any web developer should be familiar with, letting Chrome do all of the heavy lifting.

Taking it to the next level, the still experimental Navigation Transitions API is put to task on an Android device showing off seamless transitions between a native app and a web page. Aside from the beautification of it all, I suspect this will lead to a smoother transition from web browser to installed app instead of simply being presented that annoying prompt on web pages trying to get you to install their app, completely unaware as to whether you already have the app or not.

Along with the many other great things in this little video, skip back just a few minutes prior to the above to learn a little piece about how Google is handling power use of your device, thus saving you some battery life.

Google already made it clear that the looks of Material Design were to make their way across platforms, does the addition of animations and transitions change your feelings on that?