To elaborate a bit, "this" is special, but it's not magic. Whenever you call a function in JavaScript, it's always called as a method of some object, and this is a reference to that object. When you call foo.bar(), you are calling a function as a method of the foo object, so this == foo. JavaScript also has a global object. When you call a function bar() without any explicit object reference, you are actually calling it as a method of the global object. The global object in a browser happens to be the window object. That's why you find this == window when you call a function without an object reference. In other places where JavaScript is used, the global object may be something else. For example, in Acrobat and Adobe Reader, the global object is the doc object, which is a reference to the current PDF document. So in a PDF file, when you call a function without an explicit object reference, this == doc. Even though there are different global objects in these different environments, JavaScript follows the same principles regardless. this is either a reference to the object you explicitly specified, or to the global object. Does that help explain this? :-) -Mike
_____ From: Michael Geary "this" is special: its definition depends on how a function was called.
