Many programmers offer freeware as a contribution to the Internet community. I find it very useful for quick web pages. It is easy to use and writes nice clean HTML code. Arachnophilia is an excellent freeware HTML editor. If you are going to include graphics in your Web Pages you will need software to manipulate the graphics files.
Minimum requirements are for a program that can change file formats and image size.
If you are going to do imagemaps or animations you will need more software. You should be aware that most Web graphics use the .gif file format. Graphics programs You can use Paintbrush that comes with Windows, a commercial program, or shareware. Two good shareware programs are WinJPEG and Paint Shop Pro. Yahoo lists a wide variety of available graphics programs.