After delivering yet another smashing ALV report with the nice-looking "Zebra stripes" (or "Striped pattern"), my end user pointed out a disadvantage. One that will make me avoid Zebra settings, for all future ALV reports..
ALV is a mighty toolset with which great looking reports can be produced with little development effort. The reports can also be adjusted to the end user needs, by the end user, so ALV is something you should have been using for quite some time now. That doesn't apply to the Zebra setting, see below, a screenprint with Zebra setting switched on and the same report without Zebra setting:
However nice the Zebra stripes may look - they actually make the line that indicates field changes less clear. The example here shows that the right panel shows same-values more clearly than the zebra-right panel - when showing sorted columns. The sort-effect on ALV is simple: if a column is sorted, values that are the same as the value in the previous row are suppressed. This is what happened to all the columns from the overview above. But that happens if a value is blank ? What is the difference between a blank value in some column and a column which shows a value as empty because of the sort-effect ? The answer is the line that shows where the "sort-effect" ends. And it is the Zebra setting that clouds this ever-so-important line.
Thus the advice is: do NOT use the Zebra effect- do NOT use Striped Patterns.
Without Zebra effect, the data shows in clear blocks, as indicated below:
So where can the Zebra effect be set/controlled ? By default, there is no Zebra effect. Here's how striped patterns can be set:
* Set up General Display settings - striped display rf_display_settings = rf_alv_table->get_display_settings( ). rf_display_settings->set_striped_pattern( abap_true ).
Find this coding and simply set the parameter to ABAP_FALSE or call the SET_STRIPED_PATTERN method to switch it off again.