"What are the indispensible tools and references for making web pages?" It's a fun question to think about. The list below is one guess, with my $0.02 added.
Indispensible software
1. A WYSIWYG editor. Reviews of the major commercial editors are at
www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/98/08/index1a.html
builder.com/Authoring/WysiComparo/
$0.02 - I've used Dreamweaver and FrontPage, but I keep coming back to freeware AOLPress (www.aolpress.com), a WYSIWYG package that doesn't fool with your code.
2. A graphics package. This one's a little easier: get Adobe Photoshop. It's the clear industry standard. If you just can't pony up the money for it, then PaintShop Pro seems to be the popular second choice - and well worth the low price of $75.
3. A bunch of browsers. You can't have too many of these and hey - most are free anyway. So which browsers do people use now? Actually this question gets deep, so let me just suggest these:
Netscape Navigator 3 and Netscape 4 - Easy enough; these are or at least were the standards.Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 - Problem: unlike Navigator, the new version of MSIE cannot be installed with the old version. You can only have MSIE 3 and 4 on partitioned drives (with Windows on each) or separate machines.
America Online - If you expect AOL users, see how your site looks to them. The problem here is that there are many really, really different versions of the AOL browser. To address this, AOL created a nice site with webmaster information, including browser versions and functions.
Opera - This is a great browser for surfers, but designers should note that it is more HTML-complaint than NN or MSIE. Many people have noted that because of this, if your page looks right in Opera, it will look good anywhere.
4. A great set of links
5. Maybe some books
Hideaki Chijiiwa's Color Harmony - Nothing but color combinations. For what it is, it's pretty useful.David Siegal's Creating Killer Web Sites v2 - sort of the standard, probably the best selling web design book. Fussy but good ideas.
Lynda Weinman's Designing Web Graphics v2 - sort of the standard for web graphics. v3 coming.
Robin Williams' The Non-Designer's Design Book - haven't read her web book but the regular book on print design was outstanding. Truthfully I probably use what I learned in this one more than any other book listed here.