We use Dreamweaver - but because we do commerical skins for clients and sometimes have to fix theirs, we have to actually package the skin up and use the uploaded each time -it is tedious - but it also does make sure we have the correct formating and when you upload a skin you can just zip up the file you changed, not the whole skin package - often we'll be just uploading a zipped skin file, or css file if needed.

The quickest way I work on skins is creating a site for development locally - and we create a site using dreamweaver, then we save it on the network, and refresh the page.  Then if it's right, just use ftp and ftp directly to folder and click refresh.

I can't imagine being able to skin professionally using VS2005 - and I certainly don't recommend people install the source code version if just skinning -  it's an overkill.

You could use The Webdveloper extension in FF is also a good tool to use, and you'll find in the development of your work there is an initial stage of the getting the pane layout right, then most of the changes are css changes which can be done with a css editor like topstyle.

I tried using VS because that was the 'buzz word' but man oh man - it's not the right tool for 'designers' or professional skinners - they need the familiar tools of Dreamweaver and I suppose you could even useGoLive - I know a few people have, and even some who have used photoshop, image ready, sliced it and then dropped the tokens in with dreamweaver.  you can configure photoshop to use CSS for saving - but I have no idea how that works, I just read about it.

You'll see those skins that are sold on snowcovered that have 'image ready slices' code in there - that's how they created that skin fo sale.

Nina Meiers
Lots of free skins - Really there are.. 
http://www.xd.com.au - New look and feel
http://modulereviews.com (just updated - content being updated too)