Hi! I'm thinking about building my next website with wordpress. The website is going to be static with standard pages. My concern is, with wordpress you can create pages that contain text and images very easily. But if I want to create CSS boxes and tables, separating content and all, am I able to create this with the wordpress interface or do I need a software like dreamweaver to create these boxes/tables then upload them to my wordpress pages? I can code by hand, but it is long and I prefer spending my time on SEO instead, so I am searching for an alternative for that kind of work.
Regular wordpress includes a file editor that will allow you to modify the theme files, including the theme's style.css file. If that option will work for you, I'd go that route. edit: Theme editor. The file editor has been removed: Reference: http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_Files#Using_the_Theme_Editor
If you are looking for simplicity, the wordpress built-in editor is a good option. However, if you require more functionality, you can always use a free editor that can connect through FTP and edit files directly through FTP. One tool I use is PSPad. It is free and it works great. I have just started using wordpress more and I am really loving it as a web site framework for content mgmt.
Wordpress is fairly simple to customise. As for your question re: Adding your own CSS, this is possible. I've never used any kind of "Wordpress editor" to edit the structure, I've always preferred opening up the main CSS file in Dreamweaver (or Notepad++ etc...) and adding my custom CSS that way. The main content of these pages can't be added through the raw files, but yes, you can use your own CSS.
Wordpress is customizable enough. Wordpress is now being customized as a classifieds site, social networking site, blog network, article directory and counting and so your requirement for static pages is easily doable through front end or back end.