Javascript is deceptive because it is so simple. One of the (surficial) simple things about javascript is its notion of an object.
A javascript object is simply a "bag" of things (technically, it's just a hashtable). These other things can be numbers, strings, functions, and other objects. You access them by a name you have given them.
That's it.
Here's a simple code snippet:
var myObject = {"myProperty": 42};
Defining an object this way is referred to as using an "object literal".
So what is created when you create myObject this way? Here's a tiny html page
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script>
var myObject = {"myProperty": 42};
console.dir(myObject);
</script>
</head>
</html>
There is our custom property "myProperty", but there is also something else there that we did not define ourselves: the "__proto__" property. Some info on this is here.
For More Reading...
- Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford
- Douglas Crockford's note on objects in this short Survey of the JavaScript Programming Language from 2002
- An online version of Douglas Crockford's jsLint, a Javascript code quality tool
- An online version of jsHint, another Javascript code quality tool (developed as a fork of jsLint, as noted here)
- This stackoverflow post on object literals
- How to use Object Literals in JavaScript (excerpt from Javascript Patterns)
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