Flash CS3 Actionscript 3 and Maps

It has been a long while since I worked with the Flash IDE. Going back to Flash MX in fact. I'm approached quite often about Flash jobs. Often they ask for Actionscript 2.0 which I often find a little odd. Must be a good reason. Anyway, I enjoy working with AS3 in Flex so thought it time to return to Flash. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was using both the Flash CS3 IDE and Flex Builder. It took a little getting used to but I'm beginning to get comfortable. I've been building a vector based Flash map application:

Flash CS3 AS3 Map

I'll admit to being rather wrapped up in it. The continents/countries/states are individual movieclips. Metadata is loaded from XML. Flex is being used to tie the main 'all continents' swf to individual continents. There are 8 swf's in all. Its a cool little app I think. Rather than building one honking big swf, break everything into smaller pieces and use Flex as the glue. I have a list of things to do. Adding zoom to the right pane, and overlaying pins (from a lat/long conversion) using loaded XML will make it a really functional application.
I've avoided mentioning animation. I'll admit i'm very interested. In AS2 I avoided it like the plague. In CS3 AS3 it seems easier. I've played somewhat and found it all pretty straighforward. I plan to add a little cool animation to this app...