When theming, do you use the "slices" feature of Photoshop/Fireworks?

How about 'all of the above'. I prefer Illustrator to all of the above, though not for everything. Sometimes I use slices (in AI and elsewhere), sometimes I don't, depending on what I'm doing. Often I get files in FW/PNG, GIMP, PSD and other formats and I use the respective application rather than converting.

I don't have a preference and don't consider any one tool to be significantly better than others. Each tool has it's good and bad points, but most of the time the best tool is simply the one you know best.

Bevan/

When slices were introduced I already didn't like them, but at least they were relevant because all we had was table based layouts with tiny bits and pieces. My feeling is that nowadays with css and a "bulletproof" approach almost every image is a background image so slices are less often useful. Example: I need menu tabs to be higher than the visible part to accommodate with font resizing, so I can't just slice my mockup. The transparency can also be tricky with slices.

I try to use CSS sprites as much as I can, and the slices feature isn't really useful for that.

instead of the slices tool, I have a layers folder in photoshop called "export channels" containing black squares with a 0% fill, so they just mark of the area on the design that I used to export the graphics below that square.

That way you can just grab a graphic and copy it to your sprite image or copy it to a new canvas and save for web :)

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Agree with Bevan, all the tools have their strength and use of the slice tool depends on the need. I mainly rely upon the slice tool simply for image export and ignore the code.

Fireworks is great for rapid prototyping, but for higher quality output (especially with keylines) I rely on Photoshop or Illustrator.