Sorry Dan, but I just have to agree w/ Arizona Web.

For professional web developers\designers yes. It gets tedious when you try to create complex designs. Forget about complicated templates too. Layers? Ha! When your design starts getting a little too technical, the code it generates behind the scenes starts deteriorating.

However, it will most likely not be the case for her. She wants to do a basic web site and doesn't want to be overwhelmed by learning so many unnecessary things. She's probably got some Word experience, and going to FrontPage is just a logical step. It's easy to use and generates decent code for simple web sites. That's why I highly recommend it.

For any professional designer I would recommend Dreamweaver MX 2004\TopStyle 3.1\Photoshop CS. Best combo ever.

Right inscissor, I think everyone was missing the point that the original poster didn't want the learning curve required for something like Dreamweaver. That's why I suggested SiteSpinner. Really quick to learn (like about half an hour) and generates very decent code (unlike Frontpage). Not everyone is up to the professional level and not everyone ever needs to get there.

OK OK, I digress.

I'd have to go with cscgal on this one... Dreamweaver is a sweet program, and you sound pretty smart, so being completely honest with you, I bet if you just spend one day on dreamweaver just playing around you'd pretty much know the basics of it. As for creating graphics and such, I'm a fan of Adobe Photoshop... it's an incredible program.

All of you sound like real professionals so how about a word from someone who started knowing nothing at all! I use Dreamweaver and it is really easy to use...just a question of spending a few hours and it will all click into place. Insert your layers and insert your images (and, yes, Photoshop is the best .....I am really lazy and use Photoshop Elements!) and your text. Everything is so flexible and the layers can be moved around to create a pleasing design. Of course, I may be doing everything wrong but it seems to work! Easy to upload to your domain too from Dreamweaver. I only have Dreamweaver 3 and would love a more advanced version, but,for my purposes, it suffices.