Why is JSHINT complaining that this is a strict violation?

JSHint says "Possible strict violation" because you are using this inside something that, as far as it can tell, is not a method.

In non-strict mode, calling gotoPage(5) would bind this to the global object (window in the browser). In strict mode, this would be undefined, and you would get in trouble.

Presumably, you mean to call this function with a bound this context, e.g. gotoPage.bind(myObj)(5) or gotoPage.call(myObj, 5). If so, you can ignore JSHint, as you will not generate any errors. But, it is telling you that your code is unclear to anyone reading it, because using this inside of something that is not obviously a method is quite confusing. It would be better to simply pass the object as a parameter:

function gotoPage(sorter, s) {    if (s <= sorter.d && s > 0) {        sorter.g = s;        sorter.page((s - 1) * sorter.p.size);    }}function pageChange(event, sorter) {    var dd = event.currentTarget;    gotoPage(sorter, dd[dd.selectedIndex].value);}

I've had this message for a function that did not start with a capital letter.

"use strict";// ---> strict violationfunction something() {    this.test = "";}// ---> just fine (note the capital S in Something)function Something() {    this.test = "";}

If you declare the function as a variable instead of using the standard function declaration, jshint will not flag this as a strict violation. So you may do the following -

var gotoPage = function (s){    if(s<=this.d&&s>0){this.g=s; this.page((s-1)*this.p.size);}};var pageChange = function (event, sorter) {    var dd = event.currentTarget;    gotoPage.call(sorter, dd[dd.selectedIndex].value);};