> If these components had a large footprint , think mini application > for each > view, would it be possible to uninitialise a child (and thus release > any > memory associated with it and its childern) when the component was > hidden? > Then if viewStack.selectedIndex was set back to the same component > it should > re-initialise.
Have a look at creationPolicy for containers, this might help http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/layoutperformance_05.html What you are talking about though, is actually adding and removing each view at runtime, which you could do, using viewStack.addChildAt and removeChildAt, or by name. HTH