Hi Burt,
The good news is that I think both programs are 'best-of-breed' for building a site. The "it depends" refers to not knowing what breed you are
If you're new to the game, and/or building a small non-commercial site, then you should consider using Microsoft's Front Page. I used the 98 version of it and it is very easy to use and can produce quite a decent site relatively quickly. Just make sure your site host supports Front Page "extensions" - most of them do.
If your site is going to be large or commercial, then FP is not a good solution. The HTML code which FP writes is pretty awful
and you'll run up against its limitations on a bigger site.
If you're not a professional website builder, then I recommend DreamWeaver. Version 4 is a lovely piece of software which will allow you to create a large site which is pretty robust, without you having to get into the entrails of HTML.
I'm guessing Till is a heavy-duty professional
since he reckons he writes better code than DW of HS. He's right, DW does not write 100% clean code - but it comes fairly close. I'm not sure what he means about speed though - if you have a modern PC then there is almost no speed disadvantage to using DW, and there's a huge speed advantage in producing web pages thru the visual interface.
If you intend to take up website building as a career, then HomeSite is probably your best bet - and it doesn't hurt that it's a lot cheaper than DW
Incidentally, both DW & HS are made by the same company now, after a merger last year.
Using HS will bring you much closer to the HTML code, and that's important for a professional designer - you gotta know what's going on under the hood. HS will help you a lot though - I think its interface is excellent, particularly the way it shows you all the alternatives available for each HTML tag.
Both DW & HS have a learning curve, especially DW. DW's range of features is quite extensive, and it'll take you a while to get a handle on where everything is. One tip - you can pull all the asset panels into just 1 larger panel. Just drag & drop - makes life much easier.
Even then, as Till says, DW has quite a busy interface. It's a big help to have a large monitor, or better still use a dual monitor setup - all the DW controls on one screen & the web page on the other.
Couple of general points:
If you're not familiar with it, read up about CSS. If you plan a growing site which will exist for years, then you will probably be sorry if you don't use CSS as a foundation.
If you don't want to learn all the minutiae of CSS, get a good Style Sheet Builder program - say Style Master Pro or TopStyle Pro. I'm just now in the process of selecting my CSS Builder, and I'll probably go with TopStyle [from Nick Bradbury, who made HomeSite] as it has special integration with DW.
You might also want to consider another tool I'm about to buy - a Menu Builder. If you're not skilled in JavaScript, creating a useful and stylish drop-down/pop-up/fly-out menu by hand is likely to be very difficult.
I also heartily endorse EditPlus as a pure code editor - very versatile program, also excellent for writing newsletters.
Let us know what you decide