I've looked at KompoZer which is a fork of the defunct Composer. I dismissed it because it looked like shite.

Frankly, it looked like it was created by techie-types who put it together with their own techie interpretation of what a common person might consider simple and intuitive. Which is to say, it isn't.

When a site needs to use a thousand words to describe this type of product it likely means the software can't explain itself visually. This means, unfortunately, it isn't what I'm looking for.

The requirement for templates is a must. If I knew the friend could afford it, I'd tell them to buy a Mac since there are a number of decent programs available.