title: Is it faster to load data as json or from a html file?
body: <p>The title phrases it badly so here's a longer description :</p>
  
  <p>I have an application that exports data in html format. ( 500 rows, 20 columns)
  It looks terrible with lots of useless columns.</p>
  
  <p>I want to use something like <a href="http://datatables.net/download/" rel="nofollow">datatables</a> to make a more usable table, i.e. paging/sorting/filtering/hiding columns</p>
  
  <p>The option I'm trying first is to insert the table from the exported html file using the .load() function from jquery. Then I loop through the table deleting/modifying columns.</p>
  
  <p>This seems very slow (I suspect my looping and searching) so I'm looking for improvements.</p>
  
  <p>One idea is to pre-convert my exported html file to json (using notepad++ macros or something like that) and then build the table that I want from that json file.</p>
  
  <p>Any opinions on whether I can expect a large performace boost, or potential problems to look out for ?</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks  / Colm</p>