@import or <link> for importing stylesheets?

Question

Which method is best for importing multiple stylesheets? Is one method more efficient than the other?

Answer 1

I once read this article about performances and <link> vs @import : don’t use @import ; quoting a small portion of it :

use LINK instead of @import if you want stylesheets to download in parallel resulting in a faster page.

It's quite recent (April 2009), so should still be mostly true -- and written by Steve Souders, whose name is quite well-known when it comes to front-end performances.

On a more subjective point, I quite prefer using several <link> from my main HTML file : this way, I am able to see in only a quick glance what css files are called -- either looking at the template file on the server, or looking at the generated HTML source on the client side.