I think Dreamweaver is much easier to use if you have a basic knowledge of HTML since the menus insert code automatically for you… if you want to produce mass amounts of code quickly, this can sometimes be a better option than notepad or a text based editor..
One of the girls at work has a background in industrial design and wanted to learn how to make websites, so I sent her on a day course to learn the basics of Dreamweaver and she said having no prior knowledge of html or Dreamweaver, she thinks that since someone showed her how to use it, it was the best thing she could have done.
I’d be more than happy to go through it with you if you’d like to learn the basics…