When you’re really interested in web design and you wanted to get started, Dreamweaver is a really good program to help you understand how web pages are built. But as you advance and you learn HTML, CSS and maybe some PHP, Dreamweaver also starts to become quite useless. You’re better off using a text editor and a web browser.

In fact, i think it would work out quite well. TextWrangler on the left hand side of the screen and Firefox on the right with the HTML document open that you’re working on. Just set the HTML to refresh every five or ten seconds so when you save the document you’re editing, it’ll refresh on the web browser. Presto. If you’re working with PHP web pages, just run everything from a MAMP or XAMPP installation.

Probably the only super useful feature about using Dreamweaver is the ability to easily create Image Maps.

All programs listed above are for Mac OS X, with the exception of XAMPP, which is also available for Windows/Linux.
Text editing programs: TextWranger (Mac) = Notepad++ (Windows)
Local Server Environments: MAMP (Mac) = WAMP (Windows)
XAMPP = Mac + Windows