jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

Hi,

first of all thank you so much for this grid, it's amazing! 

Then, the question:

I'm using a jqgrid with great success. As default I'm using json and I populate the grid based on the query.

But, I decided that my last column (which is created runtime and contains a button) would be better to be the first in the grid.

Now I have 2 questions:

1) How can I change the position of a column without having to change all the SQL? Also, my column is manually created so I can't put it in 1st position in colmodel because it would not match with json.

2) is there a way to start with an empty grid (no column name, no server request, no anything) but as soon as i hit a button "search" the grid will send a request to the server and populate itself?

thank you very much!