I don't do much design anymore but I prefer Firefox. I've also used Illustrator. Vector rules.

I think Jim means Fireworks, not "Firefox". You can't beat the workflow from Fireworks to Dreamweaver. The interface is very intuitive. FW also has pages: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Fireworks/9.0/help.htm...
which is perfect for web design.

I'd put in a third recommendation for Fireworks, although I want to mention that FW and Photoshop are not mutually exclusive. Fireworks is the better tool for what you specifically mentioned - comping layouts - and this feature was in fact the main focus for the FW team with the CS3 release. Photoshop, however, remains the better tool for manipulating photos and other raster graphics.

If you have the time, Alan Musselman from the Fireworks team hosts an online "Fireworks Jam Session" every Thursday.
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/amusselman/

Dan,
Another vote for FireWorks. I have been using this application since it's creation, and it is hands down the best program for web design period. For finer work and print Photoshop rules the roost but firework's Vector/bitmap environment with it's slicing tools (yes Photoshop has them to but, Fireworks is better) is a better web application design tool. And the image optimization tool far exceeds the capability of Photoshops to crunch cleanly .jps/.png(8,16) and .gifs.

It has many other features like creates CSS/HTML exportable rollover effects and such which can be nice if your not good with that (but I find hand coding such items a bit stronger). And of course mentioned above the relationship between Dreamweaver and Fireworks to work round trip (even more so in CS3) is a great feature.

I vote for Photoshop!!!
I can use both but what I can do with Photoshop I cannot do with Fireworks.
If you are a designer probably you´d rather Photoshop. If you are a developer you´d rather Fireworks.

When I designed for print publishing, Illustrator was the best front-end for Postscript and Photoshop was the best for reliable high quality, very high resolution Postscript output from printing presses. It still is. Integration with Premiere and After Effects is also solid. But when I moved to epublishing, all that print/video baggage was unnecessary and just got in the way. Macromedia targeted electronic media publishing and rewrote the book with Fireworks. As much as some at Adobe would probably like to move everyone to just Illustrator and Photoshop, Fireworks - with layers, frames, and now pages - just blows Photoshop away for rapid prototyping and going right out to coded layouts.

Fireworks, hands down! I have been won over by it's flexibility and vector approach.I was a photoshop flunky, dyed in the wool. Now, I'd rather fight than switch.

@All


WOW overwhelming Fireworks support. I had no idea it was such a powerful and appropriate tool. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I have just purchased Fireworks CS3 and plan to go over the Lynda videos on how to use it effectively!

Thanks again for the pointers,

DW