Best usabilty with an editable data grid and other form fields on same page

Question

I am creating a page and the page has an editable data grid (I'm actually using jqgrid). The user can add, delete, and edit the rows of the grid. There are also some other form fields on this page such as text boxes and drop downs, but they are not part of the grid.

From a usability perspective which of the options do you think is best and why?

1. User manages the grid separately from the rest of the page. This means that there is a save button on the grid. So the user can save a grid row to the db without clicking the submit button. When the submit button gets clicked, the non-grid form fields get sent to the server.
2. user manages grid and other fields dependent upon each other. This is like an "Everything or nothing scenario." When you click the submit button, all of the form fields get submitted an saved the db along with the grid fields. If there is a validation error, nothing gets saved.

If there is a better way to handle this type of situation that I did not list, please let me know.

Answer 1

What I was thinking when I was in a similar situation, is how important it's that the user fills the other form fields. If they are optional and the grid is more important I would have the submit button in the grid but if I want the user to fill all the fields, the button should be at the end. In the case where the button saves the whole form, you can have a type of warning if the user skips some fields or you can have a deactivated button.

The second thing I thought was the height of the page. If the button hides 'above the fold' there is a high posibility that some users won't see it and the data won't be saved. So in that case, maybe you should have it in the grid. I would check analytics about screen resolutions.