Google Chrome is a great Web browser, but it's got a few shortcomings. Tops on my list are the bare bones download manager and its crappy tab reopening ability.

No, I don't want to right-click and reopen five tabs just to get back to the one Web page that I want reopened. I want choice! Give me a drop down menu that lets me choose from a selection of recently closed tabs -- like Opera does!

Fortunately, there's a new addition to the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery that bolts on this missing feature. Install Trash Can, and you'll get a handy icon in the browser actions area. As you close tabs in Google Chrome, they'll appear in Trash Can's menu; select only the tab you want, click it, and restore! That's much better.

As the developer states, it's pretty minimalistic right now. Future versions will add support for session saving, multiple Google Chrome windows, and the option to limit how many tabs you want remembered. While Incognito support is also mentioned, I found that Trash Can worked just fine in Chrome's private browsing mode.

ed note: The Recently Closed Tabs extension also offers this kind of functionality (with a few additions like favicons and tumbnails), but it uses about 5x as much memory as Trash Can.

 

Google Chrome has basic session recovery and can load a specific set of URLs upon launching, but it's nothing too exciting. If you're after a more powerful alternative, check out the Session Buddy extension.

Once installed, you can save and restore tabs and windows from previous browsing sessions. You can also remove specific tabs or windows prior to restoring -- just in case there are pages you don't need to reopen. By default, Session Buddy restores windows exactly the way you had them, but you can also choose to open everything in a single new window or in the currently active window.

You can also create new sessions by manually entering a list of URLs in Session Buddy's options screen. It's a handy way to set up windows and tabs for news reading forays, time wasting on your favorite LOL-worthy sites, or getting right down to business with your favorite web apps.

You're not just stuck with a list of timestamped sessions, either: Session Buddy lets you specify names for easy recall.

Clicking the "update snapshot" link quickly saves your current Chrome session, and you can also export (to plain text or CSV) and import sessions -- useful if you want to pick up where you left off on a different computer.

I'd love to see the developer plug Session Buddy into Chrome's sync framework as the Fresh Start extension does. With that added, Session Buddy would easily be among my top 5 Chrome extensions.