I agree with others that it's now more difficult to use hangouts & even find the window. It makes me think I'm missing something, or not understanding how to best use this... are there specific usage instructions somewhere?

Unable to reproduce the issue on Windows 10,Mac 10.11.6 & linux Ubuntu 14.04 with Chrome stable version 54.0.2840.59 &latest canary 56.0.2896.0 with the below steps:

1. Opened Chrome
2. Added 'hangouts' extension
3. Clicked on 'hangouts' extension icon
4. Able to view the 'hangouts' small window opened in lower corner of the screen
5. Observed all tabs aligned properly
6. Observed conversation windows are always moves on top

Please find the attached screencast for reference & let us know if we miss any steps to reproduce the issue.

Thanks.

Deleted: 655775-Windows.mp4 3.6 MB

	655775-Windows.mp4 3.6 MB View Download

It has been confirmed that the multi-tabbed 'Panels' function used by Hangouts has been depreciated in Chrome v54. Thus, using the old-style Hangouts extension in browsers v54 and later will not function normally. IMHO this was one of Chrome/Hangouts most salient features - now gone...

Thanks for the update could you please confirm if we can close the issue.

I'm using Mac OS Sierra 10.12 & have just updated to Chrome 54.0.2840.87.
The Hangouts window still doesn't stay on top & you can't make the top of it's window appear by mousing over it.
It's not as easy to get to the window as it used to be.
Is this the way it's supposed to work, or is something wrong?

I realize that google wants to make funky cool things for the millennials.  However, hangouts the way it was on my MAC and on my PC was the best implementation for professionals.  Being able to have a 'docked' window where it's location is set, it's presence for new messages was known when minimized and more importantly always on top.  the previous implementations was sleeker more minimal, and didn't attack me with some strange doodle that I care nothing about.  Can you remake the professional version of hangouts, I know i would pay a buck or two to get it back!

I still don't understand how anyone at Google thought this was a good idea. I've seen nothing but complaints about the "update", and nothing from Google saying they're going to fix it. I removed the app and extension from my personal and work computers and now just use the browser version (https://hangouts.google.com/) instead.

Looping to Mark to provide latest update about hangout extension, since he was the owner for chrome panel.

I haven't worked on panels in many years, but I confirmed with dimich@ that this feature was indeed removed in Chrome 54.  The original intent was to find a way to expose this to extensions in general, but we didn't find a way to do this (and there was limited demand), so it did not make sense to continue to ship features in Chrome that were whitelisted to a single project.