What tools do you need to get started with website design and development? It all depends on factors such as Level of Experience, How Often you do the work and Budget.

A website should never be hard to update or manage. But it does require some basic tools. Here we get into a few of the ones that you must have, as well as some that are nice to have.
Your first tool, Your Browser.
Firefox
Plugins
Measure
Colorpicker
Screen Capture

Browser Comparisons

Editor
Text Editors

WYSIWYG Editors

FTP

Image Editor

Thumbsmaker

Advanced Tools
CSS Editor

PHP/Script Tools