David Hyatt just opened a new WebKit master feature-implementation bug on June 19th: Implement the HTML5 datagrid. His first comment there:

This implementation may end up being very different from what’s in the spec.

The goal is to create a simpler implementation that can help improve the spec.

The <datagrid> element is a new HTML element in the HTML5 draft standard, with a corresponding DOM interface.

Elliotte Rusty Harold did a writeup on datagrid for the IBM developerWorks site a couple years ago, describing it in these terms:

What distinguishes [datagrid] from a regular table is that the user can select rows, columns, and cells; collapse rows, columns, and cells; edit cells; delete rows, columns, and cells; sort the grid; and otherwise interact with the data directly in the browser on the client.

The <datagrid> spec has been updated since the time when that article was published, but at a high-level, the feature remains the pretty much the same as in that description quoted above.

It’s great to see a browser project finally starting to implement <datagrid>, because it’s a great feature that I think a lot of Web authors and Web developers are going to be very glad to have.