Question about using CSS - long stylesheets..

I'm new here but not new to the SEO world.. Greetings everyone I have a couple of questions about CSS SEO - I would like to know if big file CSS stylesheets effects search engine rankings?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="example.css">

I mean, I'm always trying to make my site more attractive - and this ultimately means that I have to add more and more code to the example.css file - will this have a negative impact on search engines? And if so is it better to use separate css files so that if there's a non-standard page I simply use a separate css file? Really this is a question that has been lingering on my mind for months now..

Also, I've always believed that search engines prefer .htm or .html pages as opposed to php or asp pages...now am i right or not?

thanks in advance everyone

Andy

It is a common design problem. Try breaking the design up into more than one stylesheet, then include these files with the include command when needed. If want use asp or php to do some filtering inside the css.

Hi Andy...from one newbie to another. CSS as far as I've learned is actually going to make our primary HTML pages easier for the SE's to read. It deters us from placing a lot of 'fat' codes used for styling fonts and tables, etc within the basic page. I cannot see that it would have any negative affect with regard to the SE's no matter how large the .css file. The file is only used to 'pull' the particular style info that applies to that HTML page. I have on occasion created additional .css files for a site only because it was so far off what I was doing on the rest of the site (IE: only applicable to my pop-up 'help' pages) or to place it in within the same directory as the page that is retrieving the style info. I have developed multiple sites that are #1-#10 in the SE's that use only one style sheet with GOBS of styles listed.

Hope this helps...
Anita ;-)

I don't see how it would impact your rankings. Your external CSS shouldn't do anything to how you're rated; now if it were on the page, it might be a different story, since that would make for a very long page.

I know a lot of people say that Google doesn't index external stylesheets anyhow.