Yes both the bulbs and the dimmer have to be appropriate. The older, cheaper dimmers marked for only incandescent loads won't work with CFLs because of the way they work internally (you may get full on or full off or they may just flicker).

The bulbs similarly must have dimmable ballasts on them or they'll just kind of goofily go from full on to off without really dimming. Even a lot of the dimmable ones don't get really dim (the last 25% pretty much just drops off at once).

Three are only a few dimmer designs, but many power supply designs for ballasts.

The pair you select (dimmer and ballast) must match.

the ballast manufacturers usually specify the type of dimmer that is compatible.