You can build your own custumize components of the table.
In this example i added a select box to search in the table.
<select id="ct_search" name="ct_search" >
<option value="">All</option>
<option value="2010">2010</option>
<option value="2009">2009</option>
...
</select>
To integrate this external component with the table, you just need to call the function ctSearch(table_id) onchange event.