Lost-All bookmarks and bookmark folders

Question

All my bookmarks and bookmark folders have disappeared. How do I recover them? I am using safari 1.3.2 Can anyone help with this?

Answer 1

warning: it's long
I too lost all my bookmarks/folders in Safari -- after a Verizon DSL install-induced browser hi-jacking. See http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/?p=78
for a story that captures my own experience nearly to the last detail. But, unfortunately, unlike the blog author my bookmarks.plist was not a back up of my extensive bookmark collection -- it was a big zero, like some other responders to that reported.
I am a total amateur, just your basic user, and couldn't follow the code discussion toward the bottom of the blog, it's over my head. But, although not knowledgable, I am desperate and persistent and rarely accept "can't be done" answers, even if I don't really know what I'm doing and keep getting that same answer.
I tried all the standard suggestions so far, searching .plists, searching my hd for anything safari, anything bookmark, anything .html. Read many of the discussions on lost bookmarks, tried everything I could understand how to do.
I stumbled upon in the ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari over a thousand files with crazy number/character names that all have suffix ".webbookmark" I probably did have over 1000 bookmarks. When I double click one of those .webbookmark files in that folder, a webpage springs forth in Safari, one of my former bookmarks. Also, click in the finder on one of those ~.webbookmark file and 'get info' and it shows the .html file name and bookmark name for it.
I believe this is somehow my old bookmark collection, and not a history cache, for various reasons: upon clicking, I recognize the webpage that appears and I know bookmarked anywhere from a few months ago, as well as some oldies, but have not visited recently. Random spot checking seems like no sites I recently visited but did not bookmark are showing up.
Would not be fun to double click every one of the 1000+ .webbookmark files in the metadata/Safari to open the page it represents and then "add bookmark" in Safari, to restore my bookmarks. Is there some automatic way of doing that? Am I not understanding the metadata folders enough and have tricked myself into believing they are my real bookmarks and not history or useless stuff. It's totally possible my ignorant forays and fleeting glimpses (but not, out of the corner of my eye....) are fool's gold.
Can someone let me know whether this is worth pursuing, and if so, how, and if so how so in plain terms because of my limited knowledge and floundering around without understanding what I'm doing and what it means.
I know, I know, I should have backed up before I did the *&^@! install, I should back up before I do anything, and do it regularly anyway. Don't laugh too hard now, but get this, when I did back up before, I didn't know what I was doing and just backed up "documents" folder (see, told you I was ignorant; but, older and wiser now...) But I had no idea something like getting DSL would screw up my browser (and my apple mail -- that's a different awful story too, still unresolved) and who knows what else.
No, I have not used another browser since early 2005, and wasn't as 'bookmark crazy' then as I've been the last few years (or my life wasn't as complicated then and I didn't need to bookmark a lot of important, and I mean important, as well as obscure sites, that I don't need on a daily basis, but do need, but don't want to search through thousands of google hits to find the right one, when I realize I need it again...). Yes, sure, i will salvage what I can from IE and Netscape although they're way incomplete and frozen in time of simpler days.
A thousand curses upon my evil DSL provider who thinks browser/mail/etc. hi-jacking is fun and smart PR.
I will appreciate any help. (and it's understood if the real answer is "can't be done;" worth trying here though) Just point me to the right discussion if this has already been attended to.
Thanks!
G4 15" power pc Mac OS X (10.4.9)