CSS, XHTML, XML
Print was nice because of the freedom and control that you're allowed to do with your design. Basically, with print, your design just needs to look pleasing on paper and prepare the file and its elements properly for press. With a few clicks, InDesign or QuarkXpress does this for you automatically.

With web design, it's a whole new ball game. The pages not only have to look good on screen, follow some usability guides, but they must also look right on all browsers. The design heavily relies on how well you code your pages. It gets very technical and I became picky about aesthetics after my exposure to print design. I now wanted my web pages to look more like what I could design on paper. I could no longer use tables to build my layouts because this method wasn't efficient. So, I learned XHTML and CSS along with XML. My guinea pig for this was the Line Dancing with Sharlo site and I was pleased with the results.

CSS is like working with a layout program; you just need to define everything manually, but editing is a breeze!    » read next