I started the stock SeaMonkey browser by mistake as my Unity icons disappeared (i.e. seamonkey as is on my command line started /usr/bin/seamonkey which is not the correct version!) This had several bad side effects. For of all, it destroyed my bookmarks (argh!) and then it decided to install the 64bit Flash plugin. That did not work well since the version I like is a 32bit version.

Once I had the correct version started again, each time it was trying to open a Flash animation, it would be "stuck" for a few minutes, until I tried to open a page with a movie in a Flash shell. That totally blocked the entire browser. Just removing the plugin from the list made it all work again. It detected that "new" plugin on the following restart, but moved it in the list of not so compatible plugins. Good ridance!

Now, once that was working again, the browser needed a little help in regard to Bookmarks. I found one of old backups (like 1 year or so old) which was better than nothing, but not quite there. Then reading the SeaMonkey Lost Bookmarks page, I found out that they were making automatic updates. Yeah! I loaded the bookmarks from one day before the incident and I was back in business.

To restore a backup, open your bookmark manager window:

Bookmarks » Manage Bookmarks ...

Once that window is open, use the Menu and select the version to restore by date:

Tools » Restore » 2013/01/13

It should ask you whether you really want to restore as it will overwrite your existing bookmarks. Since I had that from a file (imported) I did not mind much and went ahead and got my bookmarks as they've been for a few months.

However, you may want to save your current bookmarks before doing a restore, just in case. This is done with the following selection:

Tools » Export HTML ...

This saves your bookmarks in an HTML file that you can actually browse from any browser. The HTML includes a list of your bookmarks in DD, DT, DL tags. They use special attributes to know what's what, but browsers will just ignore those.

Now that you have a backup, doing a restore is just fine because you'll otherwise be able to Import that HTML file with all your existing bookmarks.