What do most people use to create, edit, and view templates? I know PHP is server side. Is there such a thing as a wysiwyg editor for creating templates for Wordpress or other scripts?
I don't think i have ever seen a proper WYSIWYG editor for Wordpress. Really the only thing to do is create the page in a HTML editor and then add the wordpress code later.
List of wordpress tutorials on how to code wp theme. check wp theme tutorial section: http://www.webcorestudio.com/136-massive-wordpress-tutorial-collection.html
There are software that tells you they can do automatically, but don't rely on them. Get the sample theme and modify it in a simple text editor, this is the best way. Here is a guide on how to edit wordpress themes: http://www.flamescorpion.com/2010/02/how-to-edit-wordpress-theme-directly/
I know that you want to get it done as soon as possible, to see the results, but i think you should try just to get used with wordpress, first modify existing wordpress themes to see what's happening when you edit a certain file. The problem is that things are very simple in a wordpress template than anyone can figure out without knowledge. Usin a software to do that for you is making it more difficult to do a great job. Another problem is that you will like to add portions of code that you get from the web to do different things, to tweak your templte, but if you use an automated software there is no way you can tell him where to add jquery code to add interactivity, and instead of working on top of something to result a greater template you start from scratch in "the simple way" and you get nowhere.
interesting .... This time I used to edit the themes that have been so ... I want to build a wordpress theme from sctracth. but not enough knowledge about php code. but I've tried to learn the basic HTML and CSS