1. A system for animating legacy markup language (ML) elements, said system comprising: a memory area associated with a computing device, said memory area storing a plurality of application programming interfaces (APIs) for animating markup language (ML) elements; and a processor programmed to: receive, from an application program via at least one of the plurality of APIs stored in the memory area, a request to perform at least one animation on at least one ML element, said ML element having one or more style attributes associated therewith; alter the ML element to include one or more animation preparation attributes defined based at least on the requested animation; perform the requested animation on the altered ML element using at least the defined animation preparation attributes included therein; remove the animation preparation attributes from the ML element after animation; and provide, to the application program, the ML element with the animation preparation attributes removed.