Abstract: A presentation program provides an authoring tool allowing users to indicate animation sequences to be applied to an object in a document for purposes of creating or editing animation sequences. The user can directly manipulate the object on an editing pane, and the manipulations are interpreted as applying an animation class type. Different animation effects can be further associated with object for the particular animation class type. The user can select a particular animation effect and define the layout as a key frame that defines the animation sequence to be applied to the object at a given time during playback. The user can further manipulate the object and define subsequent key frames, and upon playback, the presentation program will interpolate the locations of the object between key frames as necessary. The user can further define the time period between key frames that is to be applied during playback.