Came here to say that. Most people in my circle were starting like that, playing around in Netscape, finding Composer and be like: Wow, I can make web pages myself.
Soon the even bigger revelation came: It's all just plain text!
Also: I don't remember anyone using books. The web was much smaller back than, but if it has had anything in abundance it was resources for learning how to make websites.
Yeah here we are, Netscape Composer, released in 1997 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Composer
I think I built my first web page with that... LOL. Long time ago now :)