I would recommend Macromedia's Beaver. The WYSIAWYG features provided are awesome. It supports rendering of CSS pages in itself ( CSS is a web standard fast gaining popularity over tables ) although it ain't exactly accurate. There's also database integration. The code 'view' is also very autma

If you are planning to do web design for quite a long long time, I would suggest investing in beaver. ( its very expensive so try to get some student version or something )

Some people say that the learning curve is high, but I feel exactly the opposite. To me, its as easy as saying 123. However, if you try out their trial version at www.macromedia.com and find out that its too hard, you might want to try out Adobe GoLive CS.

I've not tried the CS version but yes, I've tried Adobe golive 5. It was *VERY* hard to learn for me, but if you care to find out others opinions, most of them would say its much easier than beaver.

For coding/CSS stylesheet editing ( you should learn that in your wd classes ).... use Bradbury TopStyle. It combines all the dreamweaver's coding features, PLUS a live rendering engine ( mozilla n IE ).

Both software are available for Macintosh and Windows. Now, I would recommend you use Macintosh ( esp. mac os x ). You can acheive tons better in a Mac than in Windows.

If you have the money or like macromedia's style, get beaver, TopStyle... ( or maybe Fireworks for graphix editing ).

Else, if you have a huge hole in your pocket, you can safely settle for Adobe's GoLive, topstyle/homesite and adobe's photoshop.

Adobe Golive and photoshop make a great couple and so do macromedia's beaver and fireworks.