Recently I heard whatever people are still using fireworks. I personally go for illustrator. Some people stick with good old photoshop. how most you?
A text editor. No, I'm not kidding. I determine what content will be on the page, then I whip up a mockup in HTML and CSS to see if it'll work. If it does, then I'll add the actual content and finish by adding graphical elements from Photoshop (I haven't gotten Paint Shop Pro yet, which is FAR better for this task) to the page template.