Thank you Safdar1. As phred pointed out, Opera is similar to Chrome (which I use mostly) so poking around in its innards it wasn't too troublesome to find a cure. But it is the latest version, so users of earlier versions of Opera might not have those selections.
As for Edge, I had a look at that and it seems that one of Microsofts recent Win10 updates has introduced the gray box over the friends area. Edge doesn't appear to have much configurability (is that a word? Lol) so I couldn't find anything to get rid of the flash problem. Hopefully MS will introduce an option to rectify this in the not too distant future.
⇩ EDIT : Thanks phred. ; ) ⇩