My own personal preference is to use a single external CSS page wherever possible. If I must override a style, I'll do so in the document itself, but I'm loathe to for exactly the very same reasons I never use the <FONT> tag. basically, I follow the model for CSS -- separate document, then header section if I must override the style from the external doc, then specific element if I must override the header styles. That's the way they were designed, near as I can figure out.
This serves me two purposes:
[ol]
[li]I can maintain a single style file better than styles in a hundred different documents. This cannot be overstated.[/li]
[li]Pure throughput -- as long as the browser caches the CSS document (most will), it only downloads it once for the whole site. If I had styles in each page, then I would be making them download redundant things. Heck, if I had to define some wonky style for each page, then I've no business designing a site in the first place![/li]
[/ol]
Cheers,
![[monkey] [monkey] [monkey]](/data/assets/smilies/monkey.gif)
Edward
"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door