Once the comp is approved by the client, I start the process of moving the design from Illustrator to code. Sometimes I will use Illustrator’s built-in feature that allows you to break your image into “slices” and then Illustrator will spit it out into an HTML file. This feature alone has saved me lots of time. Unfortunately, this sets everything up into tables in the HTML, and I really prefer to stick to CSS these days, so there is some rework involved, but it still saves some time.
I use Dreamweaver to develop the site, and I run the images through Adobe Image Ready to optimize them. I always test the site in multiple browsers because there are small differences between the way that IE and Firefox display things. Once the site is fully tested it’s time to launch!