This hack will let you specify a separate background color (and some other CSS effects) for announcement and sticky topics in viewforum.php's topic listings. The original intent is to simulate a feature of the Ikonboard forum software.

If you wish, you can change the look of the final product of this hack by doing the following: 1) Apply the changes to viewforum_body.tpl only for the table columns you wish to change, and 2) Add different CSS effects to the code to be added to overall_header.tpl.