Hi,
Im working on some web software that has 2 style sheets one for style (style.css) and one for layout (layout.css). Im wondering what the poing in this is (apart from the obvious) I mean some style options will effect the layout and vice versa. So would it be better to roll all css into on page to make it easier? Maintining multiple stylesheets seems very tedious.
Anybody got an opinion on this and best practice?
Cheers PQ
I could see this being useful in situations where you want to have multiple styles whilst keeping the same layout. For instance, if you wanted to change the colour scheme at the click of a button.
I don't think I'd use it in any other situation, as by doing so you would be duplicating classes to set different styles and increasing your workload for something that's not really beneficial.
I do this in a simple CMS system I wrote so that I can change the style and layout independently of one another. This means I can write a new stylesheet for layout and use it in conjunction with all existing 'styles' for (in theory) no extra effort. However, sometimes it takes a bit of work to make all combinations of style and layout work properly together.
Personally, I think its a nice thing to be able to do and would keep it as it is in your system.
I guess that the idea is that you could create a new color theme by only switching the style stylesheet. If you are careful about what you put in each style sheet, it's definitely possible to use it that way.
It might have an application in some rare cases, but generally it will just make it harder to work with the CSS. I have tried this for a site where we have multiple themes, but I ended up merging the stylesheets again after all.
I personally like to separate style and layout in different CSS-files as you can have the same layout with different style (and vice versa) this way. Think of having a multi-client system and each customer wants a different style while the layout stays unchanged. Have those two files merged into one will create unnecessary overhead.
i think the choice depends on personal preference and on the size of the project.
when i'm working on bigger projects with other developers, i prefer to keep the styles in a separate stylesheet primarily because you can 'give' one stylesheet to the other developer and work on another and not worry about someone overwriting your styles.
the disadvantage of this is that multiple styles might appear in different stylesheets. what we generally do is have separate stylesheets for the main layout and the various sections, so the styles for the dynamic part can be edited easily without scrolling through a 3000 line stylesheet.