I agree on that, a website should have homogeneous look throughout the pages and should not change it that often, but that's just my personal opinion... nevertheless it seems like it's been like that for most popular sites in the last few years, while it was possibly more common to have fancy colors and the like in the early age of the internet, perhaps people just wanted to try out all tags anyway it's a matter of taste after all... clothes, cars, etc. use different shapes and colors every couple of years so does mainstream web design...

I still think sometimes it is ok to "break the style", for example if one page is really special or displays a different content or we want to achieve "special effects", just wondering if it's a good practice to put the css declaration inside a tag every now and then when it's not worth it creating a new id (for example <p style="font-size:......>), is it recommended/deprecated/ok?

Almost every day man... I am into lot of things these days and that keeps me engaged. CSS is only a part of the full picture... I have few websites of my own and have few blogs too.. These needs continues maintenance else will go to crap, so kind of needs my attention always.... So i have no other choice but to tweak them regularly and keep myself updated. Though i do not create css of my own, i work a lot on that. Most of the time, i change/ tweak the codes that are available online or elsewhere...

For tweaking there are so many references I have, though Google helps in most of the time.

I agree sites should be mostly uniform in their appearance. It's nice to update once in awhile though as web standards and design trends change. It also gives the impression that you're trying to keep your site as current as possible.

CSS has made the process of changing pages so easy and convienent. Plus, by altering it instead of the actual HTML, you're more likely to keep key features of your site, such as its navigation, constant. This is much easier on your visitors. I'm always a little annoyed when sites I really like completely revamp their appearances, to the point where I can't find what I'm looking for. Small, incremental changes are best so that your appearance "evolves" over the years.

I've fallen out of web design recently , and almost forgot CSS a few weeks ago untilI brushed up using a few tutorials on the web , but CSS is generally a must have tool. I use it all the time now

just like rvalkass.. I started using html and css as soon I knew it existed.. They are like partners for me.. no css no html.. and now I already have a company when I am creating a web site = CSS, HTML, and PHP...

everytime I am thinking of a site I am thinking first of a website layout for the css.. It's like "float" is much better than table.. and sometimes table WITH a STYLE is much better than normal table tag without a style..

you can do many things with css not just changing font colors and backgrounds...

I prefer to use CSS always. I always try to follow w3c guidelines about web page designing. HTML is for Structure and CSS for Presentation. I am following it. I won't mess up my HTML code with presentation attributes like color, size etc..
My CSS will take care of them. And I prefer using external style sheet. This will make it easy to edit style in a single file without having to edit many pages. And also it saves a little bandwidth.

I've been designing sites for a month and i have just learn CSS and DIV last 3 months and it really makes my designing easier. and i feel like i've just step up to the next level of my skill in web designing..

I only use CSS for bigger sites. Not for my small sites that calculate stuff and such(experiments).
I love it though. Just typing out the code once and then being able to use it everywhere with the <div> tag.
I seriously recommend anyone not using CSS to find some tutorials with Google and start learning right away. That is if you make sites of course.