[evulish]

If you're serious about getting into web design, I'd learn by writing the code. I work with a bunch of web designers who only use Dreamweaver. While they partially clean up the code it creates, it's still absolutely miserable to work with. I get files that are 16kb, 500 lines, only 12 lines of actual content, and very annoying. I get to turn that into 20 lines of HTML and 30 lines of CSS to do it properly.

If I were to recommend tools for the web designer, I'd say get a good highlighting editor. There are tons of free ones out there for every platform. I personally use jEdit on Windows and vi or vim on *nix. I'd also recommend getting multiple browsers, at the very minimum, the latest versions of IE and Firefox. It's always great to have a version of Opera, IE 5, and Netscape hanging around, though. One of the more indisposable tools of the trade I've found to be the Web Developer extension for Firefox. It's saved me so much time by letting me edit CSS styles on the fly. I also have my own collection of bookmarklets that I and some of my friends have written to help me out with things, like measuring distances and changing CSS properties outside of Firefox on the fly.

I'd also recommend getting a graphics program. Photoshop or Paintshop Pro are both excellent but not quite (ha) free. If you're on a budget or have none at all, grab the Gimp. It's probably the best editor for the price ($0), and it beats many non-free ones. It was originally for *nix, but you can run it natively in Windows, too. A graphics program is one of the most-used tool for a web designer. You should lay out everything in an image, get everything the way you want it, then convert it to HTML. This is so much easier than going in and editing code just to move something a few pixels.