no no no no no no
MS Publisher is EVIL.
If you're intimidated by Dreamweaver or working with HTML but want more flexibility than you get with iWeb (standard on Macs) try RapidWeaver from Real Mac Software. I think it's 35 dollars or so, and would be a nice replacement. Once a web page is saved as an HTML document, you don't need Publisher to open and edit it, you can use any web design application. And Publisher is for print anyway, just because it exports to HTML doesn't mean one should use it that way.
There's also free and open source applications out there. There's a bit of a learning curve, but worth checking out. NVU (envyoo) is really nice, but less newbie-friendly.