I messed up my code example for Object.create above rather badly (I haven't done JS in a while), so I'll redo it here: var constructor = function() { }; or

I messed up my code example for Object.create above rather badly (I haven't done JS in a while), so I'll redo it here: var constructor = function() { }; originalobject = new constructor(); originalobject.prototype = ...; blah = new constructor(); blah = foo.prototype In ES5 this can be replaced with: var constructor = function() { }; originalobject = new constructor(); originalobject.prototype = ...; boom = Object.create(originalobject); It's worth adding that the ES5 standard implements getters and setters, although I don't believe anything implements it yet (IE8 implements a subset but only for the global and HTML objects apparently): var foo = {}; Object.defineProperty(foo, "bar", { set: function(arg) { alert(arg) } }); //replace the built-in "set" foo.bar = "test"; //alert appears printing "test". Object.defineProperty(foo, "bar", { set: undefined }); //undo our overloading foo.bar = "test"; //sets foo.bar to test, as normal