Google Hangouts can't place its windows properly

[Harald Glatt]

I'm not sure if this is a bug in Gala, but I have tested this on Gnome3, Ubuntu with Unity, Mint with Cinnamon, Ubuntu with XFCE and also on OS X and Windows 8. It only happens in elementary:

When you run Chromium or Google Chrome and install the Hangouts extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hangouts/nckgahadagoaajjgafhacjanaoiihapd?hl=en

It's main window is supposed to come up on the lower right of the screen and stick there. Chat windows would then come up to the left of this window and they are all automatically resized and handeled in such a way that they make room for each other.

On elementary however the main windows and all consecutive windows come up in the upper left, around the same coordinates, thus overlapping each other. The automatic handling of windows that Chrome does with Hangouts doesn't work and the thing is pretty much unuseable this way because you have to keep dragging windows around constantly.

[Harald Glatt (hachre)]

I have tested this on Gnome 3 and edited my OP to include my findings.

[Tom Beckmann (tombeckmann)]

 Have you tested gnome3 on the same system or a newer one? My guess would be that some update in mutter will fix it. You may want to try with mutter wm on elementary too.

[Harald Glatt (hachre)]

It was a newer system, I just used the same browser version. At the moment I'm not able to try this out to see if it might be gone with mutter.

[Ankit Sharma (an-sharma)]

I can confirm that this issue still occurs on a brand new install of elementaryOS as of Feb. 7th, 2014.

[Kyle Salewski (greedyintern)]

Yeah, this is an issue for me as well on Luna. Really wish it would get fixed. Tried Chrome and Chromium - same issue too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Gala because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Ellie (magnonellie)]

I believe that this issue should be reopened, since it is a problem that still exist and is a thing that other desktop managers gets right. First off, some more information on the problem. This is not only a problem that affects hangouts, it affects all extensions that creates a "gc-popout-window". Another problem with the "gc-popout-window" is that it doesn't get its theme applied. I would have liked to be the one who fixed this, but unfortunately, being the inexperienced Java developer that I am, I can't really help out with that. I do hope that someone who's capable of fixing this would do so, and quickly, since this is one of the bug that I've hated ever since Luna.

[Tom Beckmann (tombeckmann)]

@Tobi: so you confirmed the problem still exists in Freya? If so, would you maybe get a chance to test it running gnome-shell as well to confirm it is indeed a libmutter issue?

[Ellie (magnonellie)]

@Tom: I have confirmed it with Freya, yes. I would gladly try and run it with gnome-shell, only problem is, I can't seem to be able to install it. It only says that it depends on libmutter0c. If you could help me solve that, I'd gladly help any way I could.

[Ellie (magnonellie)]

Okay, nvm, I went with installing unity and ubuntu-desktop which made for a very corrupt installation, but I did it on a system which I can easily reinstall. So, the verdict: window positioning and theming works in unity and does not in pantheon. I hope that was enough information. ;)

[Oktay Acikalin (oktay-acikalin)]

I was using Fedora 20 with gnome-shell (I think 3.10) and later also upgraded to 3.12. Both versions properly decorated and positioned the window.

[Bratmaxe (marcel-456)]

I can confirm this on Ubuntu Mate 14.04 with Chromium 39

[Oktay Acikalin (oktay-acikalin)]

Today I was fiddling again with the chrome flags and found this interesting thing in Chrome 39:
chrome://flags/#enable-panels

If I enable this, Google Hangouts is getting its own window borders and placement capabilities back. I don't know if this will be enabled by default but it's definitely a work around.

[Ellie (magnonellie)]

@oktay: Hmmm... That sounds very interesting. Definitely going to give it a shot once I get to my computer! However, that doesn't really solve the underlying problem: something that chrome (and potentionally other apps as well) depends on is missing in elementary. It's always nice to have workarounds, but fixing what's causing the problem in the first place is a hundred times better, especially if you want a stable and user friendly operating system which, if I understand everything correctly, is what elementary is trying to be.
Thanks for sharing though! I really hope it works, since this is starting to drive me nuts.. ;)

[Jonathan H (d-linux-x)]

The Chrome flag worked for me (to fix this issue).