Thread

Why would you put it in a template as oppose to elsewhere on the server so you can maintain it with your existing CSS editor?

1) If you are not already using a version control system, then you could easily look at/roll back to an earlier version of your CSS. 

2) Use of EE conditionals or other tags to change or manipulate your CSS (not sure how often people do it, but likely some do)

Just a couple of thoughts 😊

Cool.

Is there a way to link CSS EE templates to external editors?

All EE templates (CSS templates included) can be accessed via external editors once they are saved as files:

http://expressionengine.com/public_beta/docs/templates/flat_file_templates.html

Specifically, CSS templates have the .css extension, so CSS-aware editors will recognize the syntax.

Why would you put it in a template as oppose to elsewhere on the server so you can maintain it with your existing CSS editor?

Yeah, this is really a warm and fuzzy workflow issue.

Using EE’s templates you can dump them to static files and edit using FTP and any one of a number of CSS editors. I’ve done it both ways. #1 - Hand coded in EE (a few more errors. #2 -Editor and copy and paste into EE (my preferred method) and, #3 - Editor and FTP.

I prefer #2 because #3 doesn’t really save any time or steps, and #2 has EE’s built in versioning. As to performance between static CSS file vs. template CSS file, there might be some improvement with static files, but it’s nominal.