Quote:
Dreamweaver etc:
-provide bad/inefficient code;
-are generally not cross browser compatible;
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Not necessarily true (at least, not for recent releases of DW - we won't talk about FrontPage, which did throw in a lot of proprietary/bad code/cross-browser-incompatible code, especially the older versions). But it is expensive to buy and there's a pretty steep learning curve for most people just learning to use it.
Templates - quality depends on the template. There are really nice, standards compliant, templates and there are bloated, badly-coded templates. Depending on the license, many templates can be modified as you see fit.
You do need to know html/css to do this though. Learning at least a little of both is a good idea, whether you eventually use something like Dreamweaver or just Notepad to develop your pages. Even in the most sophisticated WYSIWIG editors, sometimes things Don't Work As Planned, and knowing HTML enables you to go into code view, find and fix the problem.. There are lots of good tutorials on the web, w3schools is one place you might start.
Most "site builders" are designed to be easy to use at the cost of quality output. IMHO, they're a waste of time.
Hope this helps!