Inline styles vs styles in CSS

Question

I know placing all your styles in a CSS file is the best thing to do as it is a lot neater.

But does it REALLY matter if the styles are inline or i

Answer 1

There's several reasons for avoinding inline CSS.

1) Maintenance, it's easier to make changes to a code where all css is seperated from the markup itself. It also makes the code more readable as avoiding alot of inline css gives you less code.

is easier on the eye than:

When the css is inline you will also have a hard time finding where the code itself is and comparing styles. You will also often end up repeating the same code several times because you can't use classes.

2) Performance, CSS files can be gzipped, making for a smaller load. It's also easier for the browser to handle when it get js and css served as files.

3) Keeping with the best practice. Some other poor developer might want to edit your code later, and he sure would be happy if you kept away from inline CSS.

Now of course you can do CSS in the head of a document too, but why make your files bigger than they need to be? More code into the same file makes for more mess. And you can't gzip it if you do.