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 a ML element in a document, the ML element having one or more style attributes associated therewith; change the ML element within the document by including one or more animation preparation attributes within the ML element and modifying current values of the one or more style attributes, wherein the one or more animation preparation attributes are defined based on the requested at least one animation such that content from the changed ML element appears the same as before the ML element was changed, wherein the ML element is prepared for the requested at least one animation based on the change in the ML element; perform the requested at least one animation on the changed ML element using the defined one or more animation preparation attributes included therein; update the changed ML element, only after completing a last-to-finish animation from the requested at least one animation by removing the included one or more animation preparation attributes from the changed ML element and resetting the changed ML element to its original layout; and provide, to the application program, the updated ML element with the included one or more animation preparation attributes removed, the updated ML element indicating, to the application program, completion of the requested at least one animation.