When is inline CSS a good idea?

You have to use inline css for html email unfortunately. And many rules are not supported by various email clients. This is important to know if you are making newsletters. slacker.com also uses flash which is probably not necessary for what they wish to do...

Richard Rakin Inline styles can be used when creating quick HTML / CSS mockups or prototypes, or for temporary styles that are not meant to be shared with other elements. They can also be of use when you need a quick fix in production while you sort out the issues locally––then remove when all is fixed.

Since they're at the lowest level possible of the cascade, they'll override all other styles, so we need to be careful.

I'd say mostly never.

That said, each time a new file is called ( a .css file or .js file for example) there is of cause an extra http request going through your server.

For a website with multiple pages that share certain scripts, this would hardly be a problem.

For a simple one page website inline CSS would be absolutely fine, something like a simple brochure site for a mobile app, small business even up to a search engine.

If the total CSS rules that your site uses is only something like 3 or 4, having your server produce a whole separate .css file for a single page would be pointless, not to mention that referring to the .css file might actually mean having more code in your .html file than the inline CSS would have taken up.

Obviously those types of sites are fairly rare in comparison to your usual website though, but I think this is all worth keeping in mind if you find yourself making a very simple one pager :)

Between HTML, CSS and scripts a page of source code can get pretty messy, really quick! Especially when dealing with large websites with many different types of content.

Using style sheets allows for clean source code, and keeping it well laid out. Imagine you are a new developer to a project; going in it would be much easier to figure out how to change, update or fix an issue on a well laid out and commented page - whereas if there is clutter, jumble and a lot of different areas to look at it may be much harder to identify, in some cases make it even worse by changing things you did not intend to!

That is just my take on it, I like clean and efficient! CSS and HTML separate helps me achieve that.

I agree with @Brian MacDonald... The only moment I use inline CSS is for e-mailing (like newsletters to say something).

The only time I've personally ever used inline CSS styles is when I wanted PHP to generate the CSS value. One instance it generating a random background URL on page load. There are other cases though where you might want a CSS value generated on the fly.

That's it for me. Otherwise, I use it in an external file. The other points here are still valid.

I used to use inline styles when I initially made my pages, and then I would convert them to external style sheets. It was just easier to to use one file when making the page, I wouldn't use them when I published a site though.

To answer your original question, the only time I have ever seen it and have it work is when using them with images.

Thanks for all the great responses. So I'm drawing the impression that whoever wrote the code for slacker.com probably used sloppy design practice. I wonder if GUI website making programs might do that too. Like Dreamweaver, etc.

Richard Rakin ,

Please avoid using bad words like Dreamweaver :P