Flash Mapping

Hi. I'm a cartographer and have been experimenting with Flash interactive mapping. I also have a personal web site I do as a hobby. I am renovating a site I created about dinosaurs and decided to highly intergrate Flash. I am figuring it will take about a year.

I created a map to go onto the site that I am looking for some opinions on before I continue with the rest of the site. It is 1.35 MB (large, I know, but a lot of content) and has a load screen. All I'll say about it is that when you get to the K-T Boundary, be sure to click the "End of the Dinosaurs" button. I am open to any suggestions/comments people have about it.

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Here is the site as it stands now, pre-renovation. The new site will have NONE of the Jurassic Park motif
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nice, i really like this idea.

bad points..

*-text is blurry on the timeline indicator and control buttons
*-navigation through the 'saurs pics sux - need to be able to cycle through them (very frustrating having to keep going back to select) - may consider keeping the menu open and having the pic open in a sub window, along with descriptive text
*-the exposed rock thing should have the option of seeing all at once i think
*-i think you should abandon the dark background and just sit it all on white, the map is such a strong image it doesnt need anything else
*-there needs to be more contrast in the colours for the timeline/control buttons - i nearly didnt notice the connection (dark background is the problem here as well i think
*-way too big a download - i take it all this is tweens/rotoscoped? i still cant see why its so large though, need to optimise the hell out of it or you are going to be turning people away and paying through the nose for bandwidth

all that said, i really really like it, its a great idea well executed (apart from what amounts to nit picking above!)