Allaire HomeSite - If you want to do HTML the way the pros do, this is it. The master application for building tight, compliant, easy to maintain code. But you need to know HTML. Best of Breed Code Editor.

Macromedia Dreamweaver - As Wired Magazine says, it is the "only one that rocks". A Graphical WYSIWYG editor that actually write READABLE code. Comes bundled with Homesite. Best of Breed Graphical Editor.

Macromedia Fireworks - Macromedia's Uber-tool for graphics manipulation (though not creation), allowing developers to optimize and preview final output in every popular format, build animated GIFs, Javascript Rollover buttons, tweak images with 3rd party plug-ins. I expect to wake up one morning and find that it has made my breakfast. Uses PNG as its internal format. Macromedia is also home to vector graphics systems such as Flash3, Director, and Shockwave.

Adobe ImageReady

Ulead PhotoImpact 4 - PhotoImpact is the Photoshop of the web. While being a lot more web friendly than the traditional digital graphics giant, it really endears itself by the rock-bottom price. Unless you need pre-press, PhotoImpact is a better choice than Photoshop. Will import Windows Meta Files (WMF) the standard clipart file format.

Adobe Photoshop - The grand-daddy of all digital graphics tools. Great for manipulation, good for the web, and has a learning curve like a cliff. At the top of the cliff, you will find the price tag. Expensive, but a "gotta have it" tool if you must work over or create artwork on a daily basis. Version 5 just evaluated and it rocks.

Paint Shop Pro - Ulead's main competition. Better than ever cross tool support (it will read Photoshop files) backed by easy to use interface. Will import Windows Meta Files (WMF) the standard clipart file format.

Equilibrium DeBabelizer - Monster graphic file converter for Mac and PC. Reads any format with pixels (raster) and outputs anything else with pixels. Won't handle vector graphics. Makes working with graphics from a Mac much easier on PC.

Perl Programming - Perl is an interpreted language intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). It is optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information.

Web Browsers - HotWired's WebMonkey site, offering commentary, how-to, and a double dose of Gen-X attitude. This page keeps you up to date on the industry standard browsers.

Mozilla.Org - A Non-profit group tasked with trying to coordinate global programming enhancements based on the recently release Netscape Communicator source code.

Apache - Home of the Apache Webserver. Apache is ranked as the number one webserver in terms of installed servers and its users all recommend it highly.

FreeBSD - A free Unix operating system that many people use to run their webservers.

Linux.Org - The Linux operating system has one of the strongest contingent of developers in the world. This Unix OS is quite popular for running webservers. It also represents the first serious alternative to Microsoft.