img too large Should I draw it w AS3? explanation within

[Snickers76]

I have a map that was designed using illustrator cs4. No matter what I try, I can't seem to get this map, which is pretty much line art and shapes of land and water with fill colors, to reduce in size.
I have dissected and optimized the image, it is always too large. I have even traced bitmap but it is still too large. By too large I mean 1.4 mb.

Is it better to script using AS3 and have flash just draw the image. Or should I draw it in flash manually? It includes hwy, street, ocean, lakes, rivers, parks, and text of each hwy, street, river, lake, etc.

The user needs to be able to do the following with the interactive map:
1. Zoom
2. Pan (with mouse drag and buttons)
3. Minimap that has a square in it to pinpoint what area the user is looking at on the main map and zoom size.
4. The map needs images at certain locations to pinpoint businesses.


Q1: What is the best way to reduce size or display a large image in flash? By large I mean around 1.4MB. I have been unable to reduce the image size by way of optimization.

Q2: Will it reduce the file size if I draw the map using AS3?


When I view the map in illustrator cs4, I can select the objects and the anchor points all show up.

Q3: If I draw using as3, is it possible to view or print out all of the anchor points coordinates for the lines within illustrator?


Q4: How the heck does google maps and other map programs include such HUGE maps and not have a problem with image size?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I've been working too long on this project already.

[Snickers76]

If using illustrator I remove all text from the map, I can import the .ai file into flash cs4 and when I export the .swf its size is only 274kb. However, the text causes the file to be 1.72MB. Will creating dynamic text boxes for the street names reduce the file size?