Two features in Illustrator that are invaluable for web graphics are its Smart Guides and Save for Web feature. Smart Guides lets you line things up without having to create guides, simply by hovering over an anchor/node of an existing object your pointer will snap to various imaginary guides coming off that point. Save for Web allows you fine control over color reduction/remapping and a multi-up preview of the original versus the intended destination formats. You can save as PNG, JPG or GIF with this feature with anything from 2 colors to 24bit plus transparency.

How well does Inkscape rasterize and what kinds of controls does it give you for saving out PNG, and JPG? I read it feature list last night, which sounds impressive, along with the FAQ and a collection of Inkscape for Adobe Illustrator Users notes. It definitely sounds impressive. I've already got Illustrator but would be willing to give another program a shot if it can be replaced with something speedier and more convenient.

Inkscape's "Shapes" support is something I've wished Illustrator had for years, as well as the ability to manipulate gradients on the canvas instead of only within some slow-responding dialog/palette.

The graphics and visual layout of my site were done 100% in Illustrator, including their cutting, rasterizing and saving. I then run all PNGs through PNGCrush and PNGCrusher to make them smaller and strip out all metadata, including gamma information. These types of programs are far more well suited for web work than something like Photoshop, so any chance to improve on AI is welcome as well.