CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcss
Alex Godofsky
Alex Godofsky

Reputation: 708

I don't care about caching or performance - any reason I shouldn't use embedded CSS?

As part of my job I maintain/develop an internal web application. It has relatively few users and just isn't that big. I've got a global CSS file that contains some re-used styles, but 90% of my page-specific styles really really ARE page-specific; they are things like pseudo-column widths (a lot of my output is just non-tabular enough to make tables a poor choice). I have taken to just throwing a <style> block at the top of these pages.

I know this is frowned upon, but every time I read about the reasons for separate CSS files the only one that really stands out is caching. In this case that doesn't matter; it is WAY down on the list of things I would do if I needed to speed up the application. Are there any other reasons, or can I stop feeling guilty?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 103

Answers (4)

Plummer
Plummer

Reputation: 6698

Makes for cleaner mark-up, quicker load. Really applies to template and dynamic development. Don't be afraid to use it. It's not like you're going over to the dark side.

Upvotes: 0

otaku
otaku

Reputation: 964

In my opinion if your app only contain a few web pages(3-5 pages) then you can go ahead define it at the top of the web pages. If your app is going to grow into more that 3-5 web pages then global CSS will help with maintainability and scalability.

Upvotes: 1

Oded
Oded

Reputation: 499212

every time I read about the reasons for separate CSS files the only one that really stands out is caching

Really?

Every time I read about their usage, the fact that you can change something in a CSS file and all pages that include it will have the change is the most important reason to use them.

Having your CSS centralized is a good thing even if your specific pages have different specific rules. It helps you unify the basic CSS structure across the site and when looking for how a specific effect was achieved it will be easy to locate.

These are all worthy reasons to use CSS files, well above any caching/performance reasons.

Upvotes: 7

Niet the Dark Absol
Niet the Dark Absol

Reputation: 324760

I face a similar problem, in that most of my styles are very much page-specific. However, my site is far from small, so I had to find a solution.

What I ended up doing was creating a folder css/pages, and naming each CSS file the same as the page that uses it. Then, my PHP "template" can just check if(file_exists("css/pages/".basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']))) and add the relevant <link/> tag, resulting in minimal effort on my part.

Just because your site is small is not a valid reason to disregard efficiency, although I have to say I'm a bit of an efficiency nerd so I'll probably be more pedantic over that :p

Ultimately, there's nothing "wrong" with just putting page-specific CSS directly in the page, just make sure that anything that is used on more than one page is in a file so you don't have to repeat yourself.

Upvotes: 2

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