Google Chrome's Pin Tab feature shrinks any tab down to only a web site's favicon to save precious tab bar real estate—no extension required.

In August we detailed how to set up space-saving, icon-only tabs in Firefox so you've always got quick access to your most-used webapps (like Gmail and Google Reader) without wasting a lot of tab bar real estate. The FaviconizeTab Firefox extension is the secret sauce to that setup, allowing you to shrink any tab down to just the site's favicon (the small icon image already in the tab); in the most recent dev channel releases of Chrome, you get the same functionality without needing to install anything. Here's how it works:

Either you can right-click the tab you want to shrink and click on Pin Tab, or, if you've already pinned a tab, you can just drag new tabs over to the left of the window and they'll shrink automatically. Pinned tabs aren't permanent, but it would be really nice to have the option to choose whether or not pinned tabs will stick around between sessions.

The Pin Tab feature's not brand new (it's been around since at least earlier in September), but it's a pretty nice one that slipped by our notice. Thanks Bennett and Santhosh!