Details are very important in graphical designing. A nice report can be much more appealing and appreciated by managers than neglected stuff.

Table Column Headers

You might want to align headers with the column content as well as highlight them with a different color:

With the Table item selected on the Outline view, click on the Header row of the table and set some General properties like:

• Background color: gray
• Text: Bold
• Text: Aligned to left

Report Layout

By default the BIRT report's Layout Preference is Fixed and the report displayed similarly as in the BIRT Report Designer. This might produce unnecesay space between some report elements like columns or the table and the right border.

Select the report at the top of the Outline view and scroll down the General properies until the preferred layout become visible. Then select the Auto Layout option.

Text Wrapping

By default, texts are wrapped to fid the column width like the Issue link, status lozenge and summary in the example:

This can be fixed in the Table item General Properties:

Each elemtent  inherits the parent's style by default. Od course, most of the parent's style properties can be overwritten in children elements.

Alternatively, you can also change it in the Style applied to the item instead of items individually (recommended):

Now the report looks a bit better:

Title

With the report selected on the Outline view, set the Title to My First Report in the General Properties editor:

Pagination

Set the Page Break Interval property to 10 lines:

Etc...