Sometimes, when Apple upgrades programs, they also (usually silently) downgrade them in certain ways. A feature that was there before will just vanish, or something that worked in one way will work completely differently, if at all. Such is the case with Keynote 3, part of the iWork ‘06 suite.
When I first looked at Keynote 3, I saw nothing but useful new features. Until i went looking for a transition that I used to use—the Motion Dissolve was one of my preferred transitions in Keynote 2, but it was nowhere to be seen in Keynote 3. Existing presentations that used the transition worked fine, but I couldn’t use it as a transition in a new presentation. A hints tipster noticed that not only was Motion Dissolve missing, but so were Burn, Drop, Falling Tiles, Grid, and Twirl, along with the Drop and Twirl build effects.
Thankfully, recovering these missing effects is quite simple, although not necessarily obvious. Open Keynote’s Preferences panel, and make sure the General tab is selected. Near the bottom of the dialog, check the box (Include obsolete animations in choices) in the Animations section. That’s it; you now have all of the missing animations back in their proper spots in the Build and Transition pop-up menus.
Why these animations were “sort of” removed is beyond me, but at least it’s a simple task to re-enable them.