First off, it may be important for you to realize i'm lazy... so I like to do things the easy way. But i'm also a perfectionist, so I like them to turn out right and exactly how I want them.
So what tools do I use to do that?
The Short Answer:
WSIWYG Editors:
*Dreamweaver 4.0
*Netscape 4.x Composer
Text Editors:
*Metapad
*Microsoft J++ 6.0
Graphics:
*Corel Photopaint 8/10
*Adobe Photoshop 5
*Microangelo Studio 5
Browsers:
*Internet Explorer 5.x
*Netscape 4.x
*Mozilla/NS6
What I Do NOT use:
*Frontpage
*Word/HTML
The Long Answer:
For editing the text I usually start off with Netscape 4.x Composer. Using semi-WSIWYG (ya know...what you see is what you get) programs saves a hell load of work, especially for things like tables and pictures. But sometimes, when Netscape just won't do what you want, it's time to turn to Notepad and do it right by hand. Although I don't actually use Notepad, cuz I use a Notepad replacement called Metapad which is like the same thing but one hundred times better. Occasionally I'll also use the html editing functions of MS J++. J++ makes overriding the link colors much easier than netscape (which basically refuses do that at all)
You won't, on the other hand, ever see me use Frontpage or Microsoft Word to make webpages. I only like to use editors that write code at least relatively similar to the way I would. That means there should be <P> (paragraph) tags separating the paragraphs, not <div> tags every other line in between <ul> (unordered list tags) along with inflated redundant code to reset the font every other character. Using Netscape's editor leaves me with code that is clean enough I can go in and edit it by hand if i need to. And it saves me time compared to writing it all the pure way, in HTML directly.
Pictures... I got lotsa images all over my pages. I use a few different programs. Mostly I use either Adobe Photoshop 6 or Corel Photopaint 8 (or 10, i got a demo) with the standard plugins. Those pretty much do everything. But some of my small images came from icons and were created and/or converted with Microangelo 5.0.
Someone asked me the other day, "so are you going to put flash animations on your website?" The answer is most likely not. Why not? Flash is a gimmick. I don't resort to gimmicks to draw my visitors. You make a slow, animated entrance and I'm likely to get bored of the page before I even get there. That, and I've been disappointed time and time again by sites that have an awesome looking front, but then when you get down to it they don't actually have much content, and they are really hard to navigate.
The focus of my pages is always content. Adding style and catchy looks is a secondary focus. Content is more important though, because people aren't going to stay if there is nothing to see, no matter how "cool" it looks on the "intro" page.
This is also closely related to why my website isn't full of "this page under construction". No, webpages are almost never under construction in reality. Reality is, the page was an idea of what someone was going to add, but never got around to actually doing. Under construction means the page hasn't been written yet. I don't like disappointing my readers with links to "this site coming soon", because how often does that site never come together? Or if it does, odds are, that page got eliminated when they redid the graphics. There's a reason they invented comment tags...If something isn't up yet, comment out the link already!