Patent ID: 8878857

Claim:
A method of expressing animation in a data stream, the method comprising: defining animation states in the data stream with each state having at least one property such that properties are animated as a group, wherein defining animation states in the data stream is expressed as an extension of a styling sheet language, wherein the data stream includes web content and the defined animation states, wherein the web content is written in a markup language, wherein the styling sheet language describes the presentation of the web content and the styling sheet language is extended by defining the animation states with the styling sheet language, wherein the data stream with the animation states is received by a web browser of a computer system with the web browser being hardware accelerated by a graphics processing unit of the computer system, wherein a graphics application of the graphics processing unit receives information regarding the animation states of the data stream to perform animations for operations of the web browser, wherein the information regarding the animation states of the data stream is received from a data structure that includes a plurality of nodes each representing an independent layer associated with a raster image intended for hardware acceleration.