Which .css file to use?

With child themes, you never want to directly edit or remove any of the parent theme’s files (in your case Thematic). What you do in you child theme is perfectly acceptable.

There are several @imports in the style.css of it’s bundled sample child theme. Those imported styles will give you a head start on your child theme’s styling and that’s a good thing.

IMO, the “outrageous” mention suggests that if your child theme deviates drastically from the @imported Thematic stylesheets then you might want to remove the @import statements and cherry pick the styles you desire from the framework or start fresh on your own in your child theme. I tend to do this when I find that the overriding of Thematic’s @imported styles using CSS inheritance and specificity becomes overcomplicated.

Thanks for your response, Gene.

I think I understand what you mean regarding the @imports giving me a ‘head start’…I wasn’t using them yet though.

So, to be clear, it would be a good idea to use those @import css files to assign the design details, instead of consolidating all of them in one style.css sheet? Those files are all located under the ‘thematic’ directory though…which would be the parent theme.

Here is an example of what my style.css file is telling me to do:
———————————
/* Apply basic typography styles */
@import url(‘../thematic/library/styles/typography.css’);

/* Apply a basic layout */
@import url(‘../thematic/library/layouts/2c-r-fixed.css’);
———————————
Sorry this is so long again…I’m just confused as to whether I should edit those above files (but you said it’s not a good idea to edit the ‘parent’ files) or only use my style.css file.

Thanks again, Gene! Much appreciated.

Just to be clear you should not ever edit the parent’s files, in this case Thematic.

You should only make edits to your child theme’s files.

By editing the parent theme’s files, you’d risk losing your customizations upon upgrading Thematic in the future. Upgrades to Thematic are inevitable and will be made to provide it’s compatibility with WordPress and WordPress theme standards as they evolve. So you should always keep your parent theme up to date.

If you feel the need to drastically change the @imported styles *but* you still want to experiment with using them…

Then you’ll want to remove the @imports from the child theme’s stylesheet and copy the content of those parent stylesheets into your child theme’s style.css *or* copy the files into your child theme directory and @import them from within the child theme.

Great, I think this is a good explanation for me. I’ll stick to only editing my child theme – not the parent. And I’ll make sure my parent theme stays up-to-date.

Thanks Gene, I greatly appreciate your time.