For web design, a text editor, VIM, would be fine for me in place of Adobe Dreamweaver which creates lots of unnecessary code. Frontpage is out of the question, it is terrible. Just writing in pure code ensures cleaner, lesser code and better search engine optimization to allow Google to index sites better.

For graphics manipulation, I use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) in place of Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop which are more processor and memory hungry. Unfortunately GIMP does not even compare with Adobe Photoshop 4 but it's good enough for my web design needs and it is free.

For vector graphics manipulation, I use Inkscape, rather than Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Freehand. Unlike GIMP, it is much more promising compared to the alternatives and it is free.

For web animation, I use Adobe Flash, which is the only choice really. Microsoft is going to compete with it with Silverlight, which is redundant and not ubiquitous. Other future competition may include Inkscape.

Sites are optimized primarily on Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Konqueror. IE is always a pain to develop for amongst web developers because of its deliberate unstandardized nature, however, it is still a priority for sites to display properly on Internet Explorer. But what's wrong with IE? Everything!

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Raster Graphics Editor: GIMP, Adobe Fireworks MX-8, Adobe Photoshop 6-CS2

HTML/XHTML Editor: gVIM, Adobe Dreamweaver 4-8

Web Animation: Adobe Flash 5-8

Vector Graphics Manipulator: Inkscape, Adobe Freehand 8

Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, IE

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