Abstract: Animations may cross different windows. These cross window animations may include interwindow animations and/or window transition animations. Interwindow animations are used to animate elements across windows. Window transitions are used to animate moving/resizing/showing/hiding windows simultaneously. To perform these animations, an overlay window covers the animation area that includes at least a portion of two different windows. Layers may be used to represent images or visual elements that can be moved as part of an animation. These layers may be placed in the animation overlay window to move visual elements across the underlying windows. Supported underlying windows are directed to draw content directly to the overlay window during the animation. A picture of the underlying window is drawn to the animation overlay window when the underlying window is not-supported such that the underlying window is included within the animation. When the animation is complete, the animation overlay window is removed.

Abstract: Animation of computer-generated display components of user interfaces and content items is provided. An animation application or engine creates images of individual display components (e.g., bitmap images) and places those images on animation layers. Animation behaviors may be specified for the layers to indicate how the layers and associated display component images animate or behave when their properties change (e.g., a movement of an object contained on a layer), as well as, to change properties on layers in order to trigger animations (e.g., an animation that causes an object to rotate). In order to achieve high animation frame rates, the animation application may utilize three processing threads, including a user interface thread, a compositor thread and a rendering thread. Display behavior may be optimized and controlled by utilizing a declarative markup language, such as the Extensible Markup Language, for defining display behavior functionality and properties.

Abstract: Memory storage and processing for idle computer-generated graphical display components are discarded for conserving memory capacity, processing resources and power consumption. If a computer-generated display frame goes idle for a prescribed duration, for example, 30 seconds, wherein no user action or processor action is performed on the idle display frame, stored data representing the idle display frame is discarded from memory and processing for the idle display component is ceased, thus conserving memory space, processing resources and power consumption (e.g., battery power). If the discarded display frame becomes active again, its discarded resources may be recreated. Alternatively, an idle display component may be passed to a separate application and may be reclaimed by a requiring application when the idle display component becomes active again.

Abstract: Smooth animation effects during zooming are provided by retaining content displayed at a previous zoom level. If the zoom operation is a zoom out operation, new content is stretched to a current zoom level, aligned with the retained content, and placed underneath it. If the zoom operation is a zoom in operation, new content is scaled down to the current zoom level, aligned with the retained content, and displayed on top of the retained content. The new content is then zoomed with the retained content. The retained content is then deleted. When zooming out, the retained content fades out. When zooming in, the new content fades in. Smooth scrolling animation is also provided by pre-rendering a portion of content and teleporting to a final viewport position and thereby skipping over blank content.