So I have officially delved into the world of Flash development recently.  It took some time to configure Eclipse to work properly, but I got the Gannymede version from eclipse.org site to work just fine. 

Here are some helpful links I ran across.

Flashvars

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS2db454920e96a9e51e63e3d11c0bf626ae-7feb.html

JSON decoding /as3corelib

http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=147845

Casting

http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/2006/02/actionscript-3-casting.cfm

AS Codebehind in Flex

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=usingas_6.html

Image as a button

http://soenkerohde.com/2008/05/flex-image-control-as-button/