Programs & Packages Related to preview-latex

preview-latex is explicitly focused on placing identifiable previewed scraps of TeX, compositions, right in your source buffer in the way most convenient for editing. It does not cater for any other WYSIWYG concepts. In particular, it does not change the manner in which you have to enter your input: you still need to know what and how to type. If you have had no previous exposure to LaTeX, are accustomed to usual text processors, and do not need to work on LaTeX documents together with other authors, then there may be more convenient ways for you to harness the typesetting quality of LaTeX. Two TeX-related word processors with a more `customary' user and input interface are:

GNU TeXmacs is a true WYSIWYG system using TeX's fonts and a number of its typesetting algorithms internally. It offers real-time screen updates of its antialiased screen display (which is basically identical to the printed output) and can export to LaTeX format, and to some degree also import from it.
LyX is quite closer coupled to LaTeX: it uses it for its printing, so export to LaTeX will always work. Import is more problematic. The screen display of LyX is reminiscent of the printed output, but quite differently and more explicitly marked up, providing a better outline of the underlying document structure. Its math editor is one of its more extensive WYSIWYG input support modules.

While both of these systems have ways of entering LaTeX code that the processor itself does not understand, creating documents making extensive use of this feature would be defeating their point.

Because of this and because they save their texts in their own formats, those systems are not quite frontends to LaTeX, but rather employ LaTeX as a backend. They provide you with convenient access to LaTeX's quality, but not to its native flexibility, power, and interchangeability.

So there may be good reason to bite the bullet, and use a real editor intended for editing basically plain text, and Emacs is an excellent contender. If you go for Emacs, here are additional packages worth looking at:

X-Symbol is a powerful input and display system for the vast variety of math characters and accented character constructs that LaTeX provides. It will replace those control sequences with more readable characters, and it will offer both new and experienced users a number of convenient and fast methods to enter them. While preview-latex focuses on providing convenience for LaTeX's output, X-Symbol tries this for the input.
WhizzyTeX also plays in the previewing ballpark, but not in the source buffer of Emacs. It updates a preview window interactively while you are working on the source. Its preview is page-oriented in a separate window.
AUCTeX, is the LaTeX major-mode. preview-latex will currently not work without it.
RefTeX provides support for doing labels, references and citations in LaTeX. It is already installed in Emacs and just needs to be activated. See the info page.