I'm relativly new to and learning myself and have found http://www.htmldog.com to be really useful.

I have dreamweaver aswell and use it to handcode. I think if your serious about the website design you are better off learning in an environment you are likely to be using later on in your career and developing a competancy in that application.

Also I would learn xhtml strict, or atleast this is what I have been learning as opposed to html as being able to code xhtml strict is better than being able to code html.

Also I am really new myself so what I say might be complete rubbish. good luck all the same.

note: I don't know if i'm allowed to post links to other websites so sorry if i'm not.