I had thought about the "alternating background" too, but a) it's MUCH more complicated than this solution (because I'm really only setting the background color of the pane that the entries get painted on - they are spaced by 5px, so it's actually the backgound "shining through"), and b) I somehow think it would be too distracting. Even with only slight color differences, I figure the entire screen would look somewhat like a zebra

, not terribly appealing. Just my intuition though, I haven't really tried it yet.
Any more comments? Merci