Hi, that's a good question. I think understanding what your general viewer want is a good thing, and keeping up to date with new tech. As well as experience
I just use Notepad to code my webpages, but a special HTML editor would be the best; I also agree that WYSIWYG applications are not the best thing, since the code produced is excessive, slow and hard to modify manually.
Thanks so much for that great site you mentioned w3 schools--I checked it out and it has a lot to offer seriously--I want to learn how to be a graphic designer and build really nice looking sites-my sites lack that graphic niceness I have a long way to go!
Yes, I have dreamweaver, and I have found it very hard to work with. I did find for simple fixes NVU works great though.
I also use notepad to make changes to my html, and I found that for uploading finished pages, (this is free) use filezilla to start with, easy to use and I have never had problems with it.