+1  A: 

Why does each element of the _viewArray has to actually store the icon, rather than only the index into the _icons array? This way you only have the icons stored once, and _viewArray just stores their presentation order.

Yevgeny Doctor
Yevgeny, that's a good point and using that method would be more efficient than storing duplicates of DisplayObjects, or in AS2...MovieClips.
philip