Which is the fastest and most stable browser around?

Firefox is by far the safest. It is extremely stable and functional. The only drawback is I've found is that some sites use IE specific coding. that can be overcome by adding a plug in that runs that particular site in IE. I've used both IE and FF for years, Firefox is so much nicer.

But i have heard Firefox is a memory hog and only having 256mb on a legacy computer, would it be upto the expectation?

firefox is the safest and most stable browser in terms of ratings.
i have been running firefox in a 256 mb on an intel celeron

also you can tweak firefox to eat less memory with a couple of manual east-to-do tweaks http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php

best of all you can block out every single type of adds with a firefox extension called AdBlock Plus and remember firefox is the best rated browser by almost evry tech magazine

Firefox, is the fastest. I have been using it for well over a year.

I run Firefox with 256mb, no tweaks, for hours on end, and have very few memory problems. Opera seems faster to me -- and very, very stable -- but FF is compatible with a far broader range of sites, and, just to be honest, it's less complicated to work with.

I got try to Safari on a friend's Mac a month or so ago, and not only was it slow, it crashed every five minutes. My friend is using Firefox, now.

On the Mac, Camino is a great choice, stable, fast, and based on the same rendering engine as Firefox. Safari 3 beta is actually really fast and more stable (in my limited experience with it) than Safari 2.

On the PeeCee, I don't have as much experience. I would just say avoid Internet Explorer like the locust infestation it is. IE 7 is an improvement over IE 6, but IE 6 literally costs the world economy billions of dollars in lost developer time every year we have to support the bloody train wreck.

Firefox. through and through.
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the IE plugin can be had by going Tools --> Add Ons --> {click on the "Extensions' tab} --> click Get More Extensions in the lower right --> search for IE Tab
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also - I've heard okay things about Safari 3 - but Safari 2 is plain awful, and I don't know enough about 3. Also, Opera is a mess, compared to the ease of Firefox 2.
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also - IE 7 is an improvement, but should still be buried at the bottom of the sea. And @ Seq: I agree, and I think that IE 6 should be skinned alive and burned to a crisp. because it's just that bad.

i've never heard of a memory problem with Firefox. It's running smoothly with a 128mb computer i have. I suggest you try them out (firefox, opera, and safari) and see which ones work best on the sites you use alot. The problem with safari for windows is that it's still very much a beta for the windows platform. i loved at first but after a while i noticed the frequent crashes it had. i suggest firefox if you don't want to test 'em all out. don't worry about a memory problem... good luck

I really appreciate ur responses and am really pleased with both Firefox and Opera. There are unique things about it which i like. Firefox, as folks said, is best overall have no compatibility issues with websites at all, extensions can customize it more, very stable. While opera, on the other hand, is lightning fast, better eye candy, useful features built in- notes, chat ,email., To the conclusions, i cannot pick one over other and i have to go with residing both of them into my desktop. But i was overall pleased with Opera a bit more.

i tried about 8 browsers and found that opera is the best.the fastest and most accessible. but you can give safari a try as i heared it is fast although there are still troubles in its beta version

For the most stable browser, I'd say it's a tie between Lynx and Elinks, with Elinks having more features.

However , if you want a browser that supports embedded pictures :) , but don't need javascript, Off By One or hv3 do the job, as do various alternate Trident (IE) shells (after you disable everything but pictures in their respective global settings).

If javascript and at least rudimentary CSS support is needed , there's nothing wrong with older versions of many browsers, like Opera 5.x , 6.x, 7.x and 8.x. (have at least one version each installed from versions 3 thru 9 )

Netscape 2.x ? Fast on modern computer, but not most stable one.

K-Meleon: assuming your're running windows, surfing with it should at least feel a bit faster than on Firefox

Firefox 3.0 alpha versions do seem faster than 1.5 and 2.x versions but obvously the stability is not quite there yet. Nor the memory usage/leakage.

evolt.org browser archive is your best friend.

I am using Firefox right now to answer your question, but I also have Opera and IE, as well as some lesser-known browsers installed. Firefox has by far the best user support, and is quite safe, but it isn't the most stable or the fastest. K-Meleon, which can display many websites perfectly (It is based on firefox's core) is faster and more stable than firefox.
I am assuming you are running Windows, and wish to be able to browse most webpages normally.

WebKit nightlies are what I use. I'd suggest Safari 3 beta for windows.

Well, at least don't go with IE. And if you're on Windows, don't go with Safari too (yet), it's very unstable. Firefox is OK, but can be a bit slow (depending on whether you experience memory leaks - just try it). Epiphany (http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/) is a good fast browser for Linux.

Safari is hella fast, though, so keep an eye on it for when it's out of beta. As a Mac user, I also prefer Safari's font rendering over the default Windows rendering.

I really like Safari on OS X...more than Firefox, although I seem to be in the minority on that one. I have experienced memory leakage problems with Firefox on Linux.

Nothing beats Firefox for serious web development. Just the ability to set breakpoints in JavaScript is enough reason for all web developers to use it. I spend most of every day in it for work. It is, unfortunately, a resource hog. I usually quit it every other day or so to free up memory on my system.

Firefox for speed, not exacty for stabillity.

You can make Firefox just as fast as Safari, by using the Fastfox extension, and setting it to Turbo Charged. I did this, and this page loaded in 1 second!
Download: http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

And for the memory uage, check this: http://rurl.org/7wh.
Ha! Take that, M$ IE!

I find Firefox to be faster and more stable than IE. IE crashes on me far more often.. in fact, rarely does Firefox crash. I love how customizable it is with plugins, too. In terms of the memory, I believe the most recent version (3) addresses this issue.

I use webkit nightly on mac for day to day browsing. Only crashes once or twice a week.

I’m FF User and think that his only problem is MEMORY
while I’m writing, I have just 5 opened tabs, ctrl+alt+sup => FF is taking 120 MO of RAM.
Sometimes it reaches 750 MO and more (I’ve 2GO)
I’ll try your tweaking, Thks
Good luck FF