overtheedge :big gray box (with a play button (>) ) where my friends list
should be
That'll be Chrome's (version 45) new pause minor flash content 'feature', but you can unpause it by doing this...
...type chrome://plugins into the address bar and hit enter, locate the flash player section in the list of plugins, and put a tick in the 'Always allowed to run' box.
21st February 2017:
Version 56 of Chrome seems to be blocking the flash player again, even if you have applied the settings above. The remedy this time is to copy and paste the following into Chrome's address bar and press enter.
chrome://flags/#run-all-flash-in-allow-mode
Then change the setting for the highlighted feature to Enabled, then click the RELAUNCH NOW button at the bottom of the browser window.
EDIT:
For Chrome versions 60+? this no longer works, though I'm not exactly sure at what version number this fix failed.