Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token var

Count the open parentheses on this line:

loadarea.empty( ).append($.thumbnailviewer2.buildimage($, $anchor, s, options)
              ^ ^       ^                             ^                      ^
              1 0       1                             2                      1

Add another closing paren; the parser thinks you're still specifying arguments to the append() function, and the var keyword is invalid in this context.

Also, use semicolons. If not for your sake, do it for Douglas' health.

I had a similar error message in the console with the minifier parsing my javascript source code. I found that using // comments like so always interrupted the minification process, and gave me an error in the console. Therefore i switched all /* comments */ like so. MDN Javascript Comments And immediately everything parsed as expected. Hope it helps.