"You don't NEED a fancy editor to do HTML"

Absolutely!
HTML is just plain, unformatted text - you can use any text editor - even Notepad!

Note that HTML "tags" are enclosed within pairs of angle brackets (less-than and greater-than symbols) - Steve used braces in his example, so that you could see them - instead of them being interpreted by your browser!

Think of HTML as a programming language. Editors like CodeWright can do syntax-highlighting for HTML.
Current CodeWright versions also have a WYSIWYG view mode.

There are humdreds of free HTML editors about - magazine cover disks are littered with 'em.
Some versions of MS-Office come with a free "lite" version of FrontPage(?)

For a beginner making an 8052 homepage, a freebie would be ideal - I doubt that you'd get any real benefit for this application by paying any more money.