What would be the best tool to write your html/css code in and also be able to easily view the results as you are working? Is there any free/cheap ones?
if you want to learn stay away from WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver use any text editor like Notepad++
Well Dreamweaver is probably the best WYSIWYG editor out there, but it is not free, and depending on your frame of reference it is not cheap either. Visual Studio 2008 certainly makes working on ASP.NET pages simple and is a very powerful editor for almost all my development needs. If you want to brave a massive and powerful IDE with a strong community, but steep learning curve you could look into Eclipse and some of the plugins for it (http://amateras.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/fswiki_en/wiki.cgi?page=EclipseHTMLEditor) A simpler, free option is PSPad (http://www.pspad.com/en/) or Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm)
I think Dreamweaver can help you learn, and is probably the easiest to get used to, I would recommend it.
NVU from http://nvu.com is tool for WYSIWYG editing of pages like Dreamweaver. Notepad++ for Text editor tool. all of above is free of charge. good luck.
At risk of sounding facetious, a text editor with mark-up colouring is the best tool to write your code in, and firefox with the firebug plug-in is the best to see what you're doing as you go along (of course you'll also need to test it in IE as you go - but firebug will help you find any problems IE may be having). They're all free...
Check out Wikipedia's Comparison of HTML Editors. I use Notepad++ but only because it's good enough for the simple sites I make.