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Firefox Nightly comes with a new FlyWeb system add-on

Mozilla Firefox has "system addons" which cannot be removed and work like an integrated feature of Firefox. In Firefox Nightly, a new system add-on appears to be installed out-of-the-box. Besides Pocket and Hello, an extension called "FlyWeb" now comes with the browser.

System add-ons are special add-ons which are not visible in the browser's extension manager. To see such add-ons, you need to type the following in the address bar:

about:support

There, you need to scroll down to the section named Extensions. See the following screenshot:

Firefox 50 flywebSo, what is the FlyWeb extension? It allows Firefox to detect and connect to Web API-enabled devices. Many modern TVs, projectors and smart house devices provide these APIs without using a third-party cloud service providers. So it's an addon for the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

For example, using FlyWeb, the user can try out a new experimental protocol "flyweb://", which implements a basic HTTP server in the Gecko engine. Mozilla developers are going to extend it in the future and add a multicast DNS (mDNS) implementation built with JavaScript along with Wi-Fi Direct support for Android devices.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

4 thoughts on “Firefox Nightly comes with a new FlyWeb system add-on”

  1. No thanks. Does anyone know of a dead simple way for users to disable such system addons? Perhaps an idea for a new utility, Segey? :)

    1. Well, it is possible to get rid of them by deleting all the xpi files in the mentioned Program Files folder.
      However, they will return after the upgrade to the next version.

      1. Thanks, I will get rid of them. Looks like this sort of constant vigilance is what we have to do now with the OS and software on ‘our’ PCs.

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