DreamWeaver 1.0 wasn't released until December of '97 [1] and in November '96 Photoshop just released 4.0 [2], the first version with Layers, it still only had 1 undo, and text was rasterized (you couldn't edit it). FrontPage wasn't even released until around '96.
Most of the websites I remember from that period had a lot of cut and paste graphics (Photoshop was expensive, has a learning curve, and harder to use than today) so I'm sure custom graphics were expensive and people charged a high rate (with lower productivity). I can't remember any popular WYSIWYG authoring software prior to DreamWeaver/FrontPage. I would guess most were hand-written--which, as you know isn't hard, but the tools were a lot less refined and harder to find out about back then.
No, no it wasn't. HomeSite existed as a separate product well into the 2000s, although stagnant as all get-out as the competition trounced it: http://www.adobe.com/products/homesite/
I still remember owning Dreamweaver 1.0 and HomeSite simultaneously back in late '97.
Most of the websites I remember from that period had a lot of cut and paste graphics (Photoshop was expensive, has a learning curve, and harder to use than today) so I'm sure custom graphics were expensive and people charged a high rate (with lower productivity). I can't remember any popular WYSIWYG authoring software prior to DreamWeaver/FrontPage. I would guess most were hand-written--which, as you know isn't hard, but the tools were a lot less refined and harder to find out about back then.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamweaver#History [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_version_history...