I am creating a data heavy application that needs to display several pieces of data and allow rows of that data to be selected for a more detailed view. The application is destined for an iPad (not an iPhone).

The data is best suited for a grid layout--there is multiple pieces of information and none is necessarily more important than the other data. In other words, I'm struggling to come up with a logical way to display it within the default single column world of a UITableView. 

Here's the question: should I suck it up and teach myself what appears to be the difficult task of subclassing UITableView and trying to use multiple views to create multiple columns or, should I just use a UIWebView, create a traditional HTML table, and capture clicks of rows of the table as events to spawn a new view. I presume the latter option is possible? 

I've looked at some of the available open source grid classes--but, they all seem a bit limited either in ascetics or in functionality (i.e., being able to click on rows like a UITableView). 

I'm starting to feel like I'm treating the iPad like a glorified web browser, but, the limited text formatting and table formatting options within iOS is feeling pretty limiting. But.. it's hard to deny how easy HTML is to work with---and, for a casual programmer, I'm tempted by the lazy route.

I'd like to get people's sense on what would be the best (or acceptable) practice.

Thanks.