This New York Flash developer likes to keep things interesting. He’s got 4 components on FlashComponents but one in particular got my full attention, and you can see why:

Pan Zoom Tool with Omni and Cardinal Controls is a stylish, innovative Flash component that includes a dynamic pan control with movement constrained to the cardinal directions (North, South, East and West). You can load SWFs, JPGs, and with FLASH 8 and above GIFs & PNGs.

The file is configurable via:
- XML
- FlashVars
- Component Inspector
- Parameters Dialog.

Main features:
- Dynamic pan control with movement constrained to the cardinal directions (North, South, East and West). Pan speed can be changed as user interacts with the tool.
- Pan in any direction while simultaneously controlling pan speed in real-time!
- Zoom-in, zoom-out and default reset buttons. Optional radial slider to control zooming.
- Unlike most common implementations zooming is not strictly center-aligned. Zoom to any point on the image! Dynamic zoom focal scales content relative to the current pan position. Visibly track the zoom focal with cross-hair widget.
- Zoom in and out using the mouse-wheel. Note: With regard to mouse wheel support for the MAC, there are possible workarounds (links provided) but I cannot attest to their viability(I work primarily with PCs).

Dimumurray’s file includes four variations of the zoom tool controls: