Question

What is the preferred way to store styles very specific to one single dom element? In a separate css file, or inline in the style attribute in the html file?

I’ll give you an example. This is the css i currently have in a css file. Titlebar, product title, product description, and category image are elements which all need very specific styling and I will never reuse the styles anywhere else. I am very tempted to add them inline and only leave the more general styles in the css file. Should I do this? Why/why not?

#titlebar {
  position: absolute;
  top: 141px;
  left: 80px;
  width: 180px;
  height: 38px;
  line-height: 38px;
  font-size: 18px;
  font-weight: bold;
  text-align: center;
  color: white;
  text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 #666;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

#product-title {
  position: absolute;
  top: 190px;
  left: 110px;
  width: 190px;
  height: 18px;
  line-height: 18px;
  font-size: 16px;
  font-family: 'Droid Serif', Georgia;
  color: black;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

#product-description {
  position: absolute;
  top: 210px;
  left: 110px;
  width: 190px;
  font-size: 10px;
  height: 50px;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

#category-image {
  position: absolute;
  top: 186px;
  left: 43px;
  width: 52px;
  height: 60px;
}

Answer 1

Generally use an external stylesheet (or several) because they can be cached by the browser.

Using inline styles is a bad idea. It reduces maintainability and separation of code and presentation.