Sometimes, it's nice to have alternating background colors in Reporting Services reports. Doing this in tables is fairly easy, and can be done in 2 different ways; one using RowNumber and one using runningvalue:
=IIF(RunningValue( Fields!MyField , CountDistinct, Scope) Mod 2, "White", "WhiteSmoke")
The field has to be one that is changing a lot. The Scope needs to be the row group above the one you want to change. If you don't have any rowgroups, set Nothing.
Using RowNumber:
=iif(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2, "Gainsboro", "White")
It's slightly harder to to this on a matrix. Chris Hay has written a very thorough instruction on how to do it at Chris Hays's Reporting Services Sleazy Hacks Weblog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/chrishays/archive/2004/08/30/GreenBarMatrix.aspx.
In step 6: Set the font weight of the inner grouping header to 1 pt - I think he means font size. The rest is ok.