jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I am currently using WebFX's XTree as the vertical menu for my accounting system: lots of different pages to go to, organized by functional area, with some submenus in most areas. This menu expands and contracts and, most importantly, stays open so I can see all items if choose to (helpful for comparing similarly-named items and figuring out which to click on).

What it does not do is anything other than navigate to a new page on click so that you have to reload the entire page, headings, decoration, menu tree and all. I want to, instead, be able to make an ajax call that refreshes just the working div on the page.

Accordion UI, I think, will support this but it always closes the areas you are not looking at and I would prefer not to do that. I am also not sure how easy it is to cope with nested accordions.

So I am now thinking that TreeGrid might be able to handle it: create a single column table, and give every entry an Onclick function to make the appropriate ajax call (or to run a function on the page to do so). I can expand a node and it will stay open when I expand other nodes. I might even be able to disable the grid (or cover it with a greyed-out panel) when I have an editing form displaying in the working area.

Has anyone tried this? Anyone know of any reason why it wouldn't work?

Thanks,

Reg