Huge CSS files can gunk up your page loads, creating annoying wait times for your readers and (if things get really bad) even driving people away before the page fully loads.

The trick to avoiding breaking your user experience is to make your CSS as lean, clean and fast as possible. There are tried and true techniques for speeding things up, like using Gzip, or serving one or two files instead of dozens. There are also poor optimization methods you should avoid.

Today, we bring you an informative video from the recent 2010 O’Reilly Velocity conference on how to optimize CSS while avoiding some of the most common mistakes developers make. It’s especially useful for those of you with big CSS payloads. The first speaker is a little dry, but the fun picks up when Nicole Sullivan takes over about five minutes in.

See Also:

• Advice From the CSS Guru: Embrace Prefixes
• Got Slow Web Pages? Find Out Why With YSlow
• Dealing With Browser Differences in CSS 3