persisting the state of the grid

i'm trying to write an application that reads data from a mysql table and populate the ActiveWidgets table. i also have a "refresh" button which allows the user to refresh the table. [the data in the database table changes over time] now every time the user clicks on "refresh", the table restores its initial settings, so i lose the sort order, also if the user had resized some of the columns to their prefered width, as well as some other things, all of this stateful information is lost when the page is refreshed. does this framework provide any way of persisting any user-modifications, so that when they click on the "refresh" button, the data will update but the VIEW of the data will return to the same exact state and position it was in previously?

thank you for any input.

ok i'm the original poster.
i think i just answered my own question. i can control sort state information and column sizes by using various get/set methods:

obj.getSortColumn();
obj.getSortDirection();
obj.getColumnWidth(n);

I am unable to read the sort direction with javascript after the table is rendered. I have a refresh button that will reload the page, but first I want to read the sort column and direction and pass in querystring. when I try myGrid.getSortDirection I get a method not supported error.

Any help appreciated.

Thx