Ryan and Emil, I think you two are talking about different things (unless I'm misreading).<br><br>The original question was not about inline verse linked styles, it was about creating a theme option that a theme user could write custom CSS styles into that would override existing styles and alter the look of their public facing pages. The OP was asking for a recommendation about how best to accomplish that.<br>
<br>In such a case, I think it's safe to say that the amount of CSS someone would write into a textarea would be very little. If someone knew enough about CSS to write tons of it, you'd think they'd know enough to actually edit the CSS file.<br>
<br>So, assuming it's very few styles, there's probably no difference one way or another in terms of page load (inline vs linked). One the one have you have browser caching, but on the other hand you have fewer HTTP requests.<br>
<br>Furthermore, the type of user who would actually write custom CSS into a theme option instead of hard coding it into the styles.css (or creating a child theme) probably isn't loosing sleep over how fast his/her theme is loading.<br>
<br>Philip<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Emil Uzelac <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<font color="#333333"><font size="2"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">CSS from the Theme itself should not be used/passed into Theme Options if there is no need for that, if someone wants to work on performance either a) for Theme b) for Theme Options they are more than welcome to do that. Simple shorthand properties will speed up the any page.</font></font></font><div>
<div class="im">
<font color="#333333"><font size="2"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br clear="all"></font></font></font><div><b><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">----</font></b></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Emil Uzelac</b> | ThemeID | T: <a href="tel:224-444-0006" value="+12244440006" target="_blank">224-444-0006</a> | Twitter: @EmilUzelac | E: <a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com" target="_blank">emil@themeid.com</a> | <a href="http://themeid.com/" target="_blank">http://themeid.com</a></font></div>
<div><font color="#999999" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein</font></div><br>
<br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 11:03 PM, Ryan Hellyer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ryan@pixopoint.com" target="_blank">ryan@pixopoint.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<span style="border-collapse:collapse;font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px">> From: Emil Uzelac <<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 204)" target="_blank">emil@themeid.com</a>><div>
<br>
> Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Best practice CSS options<br>> <br></div><div>> Performance-wise for Theme Options? come on now. How much of styles can one<br>> have to worry about the page speed? The important part is that our custom<br>
> CSS or JS is used only where we need it and that's i.e. theme-options.php<br>> and yes we do use external styles. I would not worry about performance at<br>> all. wp_head is the easiest and definitely the best option to do this so.<br>
> <br>> Cheers,<br>> Emil<br><br></div></span>
<div><span style="border-collapse:collapse;font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px">I think you are assuming that generated CSS will only be very small, whereas it could easily be all of the CSS used in the theme. Plus, if someone wants to improve their themes performance the theme review team presumably doesn't want to intentionally stop them from doing so.</span></div>
<div><span style="border-collapse:collapse;font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="border-collapse:collapse"><br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Philip Walton<br>