I wanted to punch up a Dodeca view the other day by putting a little zebra striping on some relational data. Although having built-in support for this is on my wishlist, for now a simple workbook script (WBS) gets the job done. This is also alternatively called “greenbar”… depending on what decade you were born in.

The technique itself is pretty simple. You can accomplish this in a few ways in Dodeca (as with everything), so here’s one way to go. First, when the view is opened, we have a workbook script to set a color index (that’s the first step in the following screenshot). In this case I am setting a very light grey to be color Index 2.

In the next step (the one that actually does the striping), I have defined a simple method that applies to a range named “Address” and just paint every other row depending on if it’s even or not. I’m just using the formula =MOD(@CRow(), 2) = 0, which is a normal Excel function (modulus), and a workbook script function (@CRow()) that returns the current row number being processed. If it’s even, then the cell should be painted. If not, nothing happens. So if you wanted two different colors you’d just add a new color set step and a new SetFill method that applied to odd rows.

Here’s a screenshot of the full WBS:

Dodeca WBS Zebra Striping Example