Alternating row colors/shades

Started by Coldblackice, August 02, 2021, 04:28:39 AM

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Coldblackice

Would it be possible to add the option of alternating row colors/shades?

It's a alternative to the visual "clutter/chaos" of a grid, given grids add a densely repeating geometric pattern, making it more difficult for the eye to track in one direction across (unless it's tracking carefully cell to cell). It adds a lot of noise to a table too when it's an X/Y cross-grid, not guaranteeing precision as the eye is able to unintentionally wander to a neighboring row without realizing it. Similar principle to why it's difficult for the human eye to count the individual numbers of a repeating pattern, e.g. counting the number of 0's in "000000000000".

With alternating row colors, however, they're much easier for the eye to follow, given the eye distinguishes color patterns very well, and when combined with the already in place column borders (which differ in style from alternating color), they make a nice complementary pairing to each other.

It's not so much gridlines themselves that cause the chaos, it's the densely geometric "thatching", which would also occur if row colors and column colors were both alternated X/Y.

Not a big deal of course, it'd just be useful for those with longer rows to track across. I have all but one column type enabled, so I'll resize the bottom pane divider and use that as a guide ruler given the gridlines add too much visual noise IMO (especially with the contrast).

(Example attached)

Jeremy Collake

Sure, I agree it would be helpful, and will keep it in mind.

It will be most achievable with the planned switch to an owner-drawn listview. That work is necessary for the tree view I've previously mentioned, and will enable more sophisticated painting.

Software Engineer. Bitsum LLC.