One of the library authors here -- That sounds like quite the table! I wouldn't doubt that Griddle would have a bit more overhead than the solution you mentioned. I wonder if the performance would be better in this version -- not saying it would necessarily but it may :) We stripped out one of the more complicated parts (the piece that let people specify a callback to obtain external data) to its own component.

Horizontal scrolling definitely sounds like an interesting idea. Seems like it would be feasible to add -- I'll have to think about that a bit more. Also, if the solution you came up with is online anywhere I'd love to see it!