91 Great info

Great and very informative, hope to see more stuff like this soon.

posted at 12:17 pm on May 13, 2008 by sachin kumar

92 Zebra stripes are not hard to implement

The article implied that Zebra stripes don’t provide significant ROI because of being a lot of work to implement. Sure, maybe if we are talking about a static html page, but who makes large static datasets? Isn’t that, like, the point of putting a DB behind your website? When looping over a dataset it is easier than breathing to make some form of Zebra stripes. I believe that good design is about doing all of the little things, one of them being Zebra striping. Sure, one could take any “little” thing and deflate its value. A web page and its usability is the sum of its parts.

posted at 08:54 pm on May 13, 2008 by Chris Moyers

93 Multiple Rows when Striping

I’ve used striping at times, but after asking the people who actually stare at this stuff all day (go ask your accounting people) I’ve had it explained to me that single lines of colored stripes feel like it slows them down. Now alternating three lines of white, three lines colored – THAT seems popular! It breaks things up, makes it a little easier on the eyes (that comment especially from people with glasses) and isn’t so busy.

Just another thought. :)

posted at 10:07 pm on May 13, 2008 by Kerri-Anne Sheridan

94 Untitled

Good analysis… However, for a short period of time readers might be able to focus and produce same results. Over a long period of time, it might help to provide visual clues. Also, it might help more casual readers too.

posted at 04:38 am on May 14, 2008 by abhi G

95 Stripes are really easy to implement!

“The article implied that Zebra stripes don’t provide significant ROI because of being a lot of work to implement. Sure, maybe if we are talking about a static html page, but who makes large static datasets?”

Even in static Sites it doesnt require more than giving a class to half the table-rows (and writing the appropriate css-rules).
Which can also be done by a javascript (see this weeks Editors choice article)

if you are Ok with only giving stripes to modern browsers, you might also use one advanced selector like – table:row[%2] – table tr:nth-child(2n) – table tr:nth-child(odd)
instead of giving classes (dont know which one is most supportet).

posted at 04:05 pm on May 14, 2008 by Wolfgang Löer

96 Mmmmmmh, zeeebra stripes.

I agree with others who say that zebra striping is probably more helpful and will most likely provide a positive effect when dealing with big, long tables over a long period of time.

I’d also like to point out another possible problem with Jessica’s experiment: participants are given a task, which is likely to raise their level of concentration. But does this technique really provide any clues about the readability of tables we encounter every day, like charts on music websites, where it isn’t really essential for the reader to “get it right”?

I think that stripes – table cell borders or not – improve the readability of tabular data, and in my opinion this experiment does not provide evidence for this assumption, because it can’t.
Without conducting complicated and expensive tests, we’ll have to rely on people’s subjective preferences, which seem to be in favour of those stripes, and I don’t see the problem, given that it has become relatively easy to implement them.

posted at 05:54 pm on May 14, 2008 by Michael Macher

97 Why only one deep?

One of the things I remember from my (relatively) misspent youth was that White Dwarf) (or possibly some other rôle-play gaming mag) used to have lots of big tables in it. One of the things I found pticly useful in following them was zebra striping.

One-by-one striping on a relatively large number of rows, though, tends to descend into visual soup. So they striped several rows together — one-by-one on small tables, three-by-three in larger tables and five-by-five in really big tables. It works surprisingly well, as they eye can just follow the colour block, but you automatically follow top, middle, bottom (or mid-top, mid-bottom) rows surprisingly easily.

It might also be worth testing with readers who have an astigmatism) — I find a lot of things more difficult than “normally” sighted readers do, because my eyeballs are oddly-shaped ;o)

posted at 07:11 pm on May 14, 2008 by Owen Blacker

98 Completely Pointless

Even if you could prove that Zebra striping is detrimental or, at best, completely ineffective, which you couldn’t, you still did not provide any kind of tangible ALTERNATIVE to this technique.

Sooooo, this article is completely pointless, as far as I am concerned.

posted at 06:58 am on May 15, 2008 by joe wanker

99 An alternative

We could just hi-light or shade only the row that the mouse pointer hovers over. That would help your eyes to follow along, without needing even-odd zebra stripes. What do you think?

posted at 10:36 pm on May 15, 2008 by Rob Record

100 Mmmm Zebra, the other meat

In my personal experience Zebra striping makes it easier to focus on one line, especially if there is multiple columns or extended data; the colour assists my eye in tracking the row in comparison to lines which I can sometimes find difficult to follow or can accidentally skip lines while scrolling.

So personally I think that ‘zebra striping’ is a better method of assisting the readability of a table, more so with the borders then without.

I don’t need a university study to tell me that or confirm it ;o)

posted at 12:27 am on May 16, 2008 by Chris McKee