[thelist] does CSS slow down page rendering?

Erika Meyer emeyer at lclark.edu
Fri Dec 21 13:00:32 CST 2001


To think about the byte-level detail would give me a headache but 
here's a quick answer.  (someone else will explain better, no doubt.)

In general CSS speeds up rendering...
compared to what?

compared to using tables.  compared to using <font> tags.  CSS is 
faster in the <head> or in an external styles-sheet.

CSS is faster on a train, CSS is faster in the rain...
CSS is faster in a box, CSS is faster with a fox.

I don't know about doing it all with <span>s because that would 
defeat the whole purpose of CSS IMO.

So short answer: CSS will speed up your pages, if you are using it in 
place of nested table layouts and/or font tags.

Erika

>To create a web page that renders quickly, I know that
>it's recommended to minimize graphics. But does the
>page rendering time increase if you use CSS? I can see
>that if you reference the style sheet in an external
>file, the server must make an extra connection to get
>the code. But if you embed the code in the HTML, would
>it slow down performance? Has anyone done a metric
>measuring this? Or is it all a bunch of hot air?
>
>73 and Happy Holidays
>
>Joe

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