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General Discussion

Laura Cressman
Laura Cressman
12,548 Points
Posted by Laura Cressman
Laura Cressman
12,548 Points

How many stylesheets should a website have?

I am in the middle of the Sass course, and one of the videos mentioned that many sites have several (if not more) linked stylesheets. I was wondering what the advantages or disadvantages of this were, particularly regarding load time. Should each page have its own stylesheet? It seems redundant especially if for instance the header and footer are common to all pages. Thanks, Laura:)

2 Answers

Stone Preston
Stone Preston
42,016 Points
Stone Preston
Stone Preston
42,016 Points

Having multiple stylesheets does decrease performance slightly as it means more requests, however I would think the organization and readabilty benefit outweighs this decrease in performance. Having one super big stylesheet probably isnt ideal.

Véronique Bellamy
Véronique Bellamy
20,810 Points
Véronique Bellamy
Véronique Bellamy
20,810 Points

Ideally, as few as possible for the purpose Stone states. I would try to be as economical with the resources that I can. Think about whether what you are doing is worth the load time... and make sure to minify your CSS files for good measure. :)

Laura Cressman
Laura Cressman
12,548 Points
Laura Cressman
Laura Cressman
12,548 Points

I'm still new to this, so does minify just mean make it as concise as possible?

Véronique Bellamy
Véronique Bellamy
20,810 Points

Minifying is a process that removes the spaces and other fluff from CSS and JavaScript. Here's an article about the process: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheImportanceAndEaseOfMinifyingYourCSSAndJavaScriptAndOptimizingPNGsForYourBlogOrWebsite.aspx