I was struggling to get some cross-browser rounded corners zebra table rows… but since the table required vertical-align:middle… applying the top right AND bottom right corners was impossible… up until I found out that CSS background-image on TR actually works cross-browser 
It works out of the box for most standards-compliant browsers… and a minor tweak is required for our older IE7 to kick in and apply it as well: at position:relative; to the table row.