Jeremy Hilts, Web Developer

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: inline styles are bad. Mmkay?

Hey, I know what you’re thinking … if you’re allowed to do it, how can it be bad? Just because you won’t go to jail for cutting your toe off doesn’t mean you should be cutting your toes off. Do you remember our conversation about IDs being too specific? Same thing. Except worse. Much worse.

In any situation where an ID has been used and needs to be overridden, you could always use more IDs or a later definition of the same selector. Basically, “#big_section #small_section” is more specific than “#small_selection”; but if you don’t have “#big_section” you could always define “#small section” in a second CSS file or later in the same CSS file. Granted, I can’t think of any good reason to have the same selector twice in the same file, but it’s still possible. A later definition, top-to-bottom, of an equivalent selector is always more specific.