Solid example, I frequently find myself saying something to the effect of:

    var this_autobot = this;
    async_function = function(){
      this_autobot.fire();
    }

    var that = this;
    return function(){
      that.fire();
    }

I do the following a lot (setTimeout as a relevant example):

  setTimeout(
    (function(scope){
      return function(){scope.fire();};
    })(this), 500
  );

The short explanation is you return a function from an immediately-executing anonymous function that takes the current scope as a parameter.

Is "for noobs" really necessary?

Don't do it. Do this instead:

var self = this; function(){ self.foo() }

You can also create a 'bind' that returns a function that when called applies the context you desire.

  function bind(fn, selfObj) {
     return function() {
        return fn.apply(selfObj || window);
     };
  }

  callback = bind(function(){ alert(this.hello); }, this);

I don't think you're doing this right. The first .then receives a function, but the second .then executes function.apply at construction time and receives only its result (null) as the callback.

Also, after understanding what's going on, existing solutions might be better than rolling your own: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.proxy/ .

In ES5 you have Function.prototype.bind that returns a new function with this bound to whatever you want. You can also pass extra default arguments. On older browsers you could use es5-shim for this functionality.

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global...