Multi-Mode Animation System

Animations are displayed on a user interface (UI) of a computing device using one of multiple different animation system modes, each animation system mode operating in a different manner to determine how to change the display for an animation. The animation can be on a particular object that is displayed by the computing device (e.g., scrolling a list, moving an icon or character from one location to another) and/or can be on the display as a whole (e.g., panning or scrolling a view of the whole display). The multi-mode animation system operates to select an animation system mode on a frame by frame basis. For each frame of content being displayed on the display device, the multi-mode animation system selects an appropriate one of the animation system modes to use for generating the content of that frame.