After building and using components in Flash MX, I have come to realize what a truly powerful tool they can be. I think MX did a good job of implementing components, and giving developers some decent ways to build and package components (ie., library folder structure, centralized code, Object.registerClass, component panel, etc). However, after playing with MX 2004 for a couple of days, it looks like they've really improved on several things that make developing and distributing components even more powerful. The current components are referred to as v2 Component Architecture.

Here are some of my initial observances: