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Just thought you might be interested to learn that according to some print professionals and members of the Business Forms Management Association (http://www.bfma.org), zebra striped paper (i.e. green paper) was introduced originally as a way for paper companies to increase market share for their product. That is, zebra striping was a way to differentiate Company A's paper from Company B's - there is no record of it being introduced for reasons of usability.
I stand by my assertion that whilst there are low level principles that support the use of zebra striping (e.g. the Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception), there has been no research to confirm that zebra striping actually helps, in either the paper or electronic medium. This lack of scientific research is important because what is helpful to you and I (and I certainly like zebra striping over plain), may be visual noise or otherwise problematic to another user. Those of you who follow Edward Tufte will know what I mean.
I believe it is healthy to carefully and impartially check our assumptions and habits. Data that supports our design decisions helps us justify them to stakeholders.
Regards,
Jessica
http://formulate.com.au/

Dear Joocemann
If you read the article or the research paper, you will see that participants were randomly assigned to either receive the plain table first or the striped table first.
Furthermore, my analysis combine the results of people who received the plain table first with those who received the striped table first, to control for the adaptation effect.
Regards,
Jessica
http://formulate.com.au/

Dear Nguy
I agree with you wholeheartedly that failure to demonstrate a statistically significant difference does not mean that there isn't a real difference.
However, I never made such a claim. All I said that was that in this case, we didn't find any statistically significant difference. I propose that this is interesting, but not enough to necessarily justify not using zebra striping.
I vehemently disagree that only studies that find a statistically significant difference should be published. It is adding to the body of scientific knowledge to publish all results, provided they come valid and reliable studies.
Regards,
Jessica
http://formulate.com.au/

Dear Acklenx
I'd be very keen to hear what holes you feel there are in my study, which was a within-groups experimental design.
Perhaps you would be willing to describe your concerns here?
Regards,
Jessica
http://formulate.com.au/

The article, and the study it refers to both point out that while interesting, there is nothing conclusive (yet). From the study:

However, there is clearly a need for additional studies to investigate how task difficulty and the size of the table/form influence the effect of zebra striping.

For the time being, the decision about whether to use zebra striping probably comes down to a subjective assessment of likely gains versus the cost of implementation.

And I thought this comment from the article was particularly interesting:

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, a number of participants in the study spontaneously reported using their finger, on or over the computer screen, to follow down columns and across rows. Other participants used their mouse to highlight rows of interest. These people were, in effect, creating their own "temporary" zebra striping. So we may be reducing the burden on our users if we do the zebra striping for them.

I don't think bias or incompetence were demonstrated by the article or the study. But I think the tables used for the study were too simple to demonstrate much result in any event. Formulate is doing a follow up to the study, which you can particpate with at http://surveys.formulate.com.au/dtfu/, but having done it I don't expect that the results will be any more conclusive. The tables are not significantly detailed or complex. However, although my speed was fairly consistent, I was aware that the zebra stripes felt easiest to use, and subjective sense is in my view and important consideration for good design.

If you didn't like how they ran this test (and I agree with most of the complaints), A List Apart is running a follow-up survey over the internet. I almost missed this, as it isn't mentioned until the very end of the article.

You can find it at http://surveys.formulate.com.au/dtfu. It takes about three-five minutes. I just took it, and they appear to be using darker row colors now. It's still too narrow to see how useful it is when you have to scroll horizontally, but it's a small improvement at least.

I wondered about that, too. I didn't even notice the stripes until I saw the caption for the image, then had to look back up.

For quick swapping you only want to deal with the background, not the foreground, and so you have to consistently use light or dark colors so that the text doesn't disappear. Working around this is almost trivial, though, especially when using CSS and classes.

And, as another user said, stripes really become useful when you have large spans of columns to go through. I'd be interested to see this same thing re-conducted both with darker rows and with wider (requiring scrolling) tables.

In fact, it looks like they're doing a follow-up study. I just took it, and while the table is still narrow it also used darker row colors. (Though now you get a mix of tables, rather than a single one.)