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/