Don’t use @import

Or more succinctly: "In IE @import behaves the same as using &#60;link&#62; at the bottom of the page, so it's best not to use it." Know and love <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html</a>

I wasn't even aware @import existed, and I don't really see any redeeming reasons to use it instead of 'link' anyways, as 'link' is "cleaner" and is HTML and thus can reap all the rewards that linked javascript, image links, etc. enjoy. Can someone please explain?

I highly recommend his book (or wait for the upcoming 2nd edition), it is filled with invaluable stuff like this. Really an eye opener for me.

Speaking of, is there a way to import the navigation menu into an xhtml page without php or somesuch? Both "link" and @import are only valid within the header, so they are no good for importing data into the body of the page.

The original rationale for using @import for including a CSS file in HTML was that Netscape Navigator 4 did not understand the command and thus was an easy, effective and compliant way to exclude that browser, since it had atrocious support for stylesheets. Now that NN is no longer a factor it makes sense to relegate the use of @import to only within a CSS file. BWT, the screen flicker of IE is eliminated if LINK is used first (say to load a reset.css file) and any subsequent stylesheet loaded via @import behaves as it should.