Question

I thought these were equivalent.

var __Panel = {
 this.header = null;
};

var __Panel = function() {
 this.header = null;
};

The first one gives a compiler error “Expected identifier or string” for this, and “Expected ‘,'” for ;.

Can someone clarify this a little for me?

Answer 1

{} is used to define an object, and function(){} is used to define a function.

Thos body inside of {} must be a series of comma-separated key: value pairs, like this:

var man = {
  age: 24,
  height: 6,
  occupation: "programmer"
};

Your example doesn’t work for three reasons. First, this.header is not a valid key because it contains a dot, : rather than = is the token used to separate keys from the values, and , is used instead of ; to delimit key-value pairs.