I would drop Freehand It looks like you are trying to get a ful design toolkit. I would WAIT. Macromedia has just been bought by Adobe, things will now change alot. Play around for now, or build a few new sites If you want to then I would Def go for Dreamweaver Adobe Photoshop Flash If I knew then what I knew now. I would learn PHP, MySQL, HTML and CSS. Flash & Photoshop, take a very long time to learn (I havent seen anyone thats good that hasnt learnt it for 2+ years). - just try asking anyone here to download flash and try making something! - If you are good, then its VERY good. But for your situation, its probably better to focus on what you know, earn and pay someone that flashes daily to do your design work.