I used to design websites using Fireworks — sometimes I used Illustrator. To me, they were easier to use and also performed a lot snappier than Photoshop. Fireworks also had some cool features like symbols, where you could turn a group of objects in to an editable symbol that could be used throughout the site. Then I was informed that Photoshop was really the standard, so I had better get to it. And I did. And that was a good thing — Photoshop has been the standard at both my current and previous places of employment. But, just because it is the standard, does that make it right?
My two biggest issues with Photoshop for web design are:
1. No paragraph styles. 2. No symbols.
Imagine setting all of your text at the proper size with a paragraph style for each H1, H2, and P tag — then being able to update every bit of text on your site by simply adjusting a paragraph style. Imagine turning all of your common elements such as headers and footers and into a symbol, then editing one instance of that symbol to affect change across all of your templates. Imagine seeing all of those templates at the same time (no turning off and on layers or layer comps) on ONE document across different artboards. This is Illustrator. I think I am going to give it a try for my next web design project.