this thing almost works:

function myClass(url) {

this.source = url;
this.rq = null;
this.someOtherProperty = "hello";

// open connection to the ajax server
this.start = function() {
    if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
        this.rq = new XMLHttpRequest();
        if (this.rq.overrideMimeType)
        this.rq.overrideMimeType("text/xml"); 
    } else
        this.rq = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

    try {
        this.rq.onreadystatechange = connectionEvent;
        this.rq.open("GET", this.source, true);
        this.rq.send(null);
        this.state = 1;
    } catch (err) {
        // some error handler here
    }

}

function connectionEvent() {
    alert("i'm here");
    alert("this doesnt work: " + this.someOtherProperty);
}

} // myClass

so it's nothing more than having the XMLHttpRequest object as a member of my class, instead of globally defined, and invoking it in the traditional way. however, inside my connectionEvent callback function, the meaning of "this" is lost, even though the function itself is scoped inside myClass. i also made sure that the object that i instantiate from myClass is kept alive long enough (declared global in the script).

in all the examples of using javascript classes that i saw, "this" was still available inside the inner functions. for me, it is not, even if i take my function outside and make it a myClass.prototype.connectionEvent. what am i doing wrong? thank you.