safari iconlets

On the popular bookmarks>drop down list I used to get a tiny icon recognising each of the sites I'd bookmarked there. Now they have gone all I get is a blue ball for each website. I want my tiny icons back, easier to recognise all the sites bookmarked. Is there a setting to do this?

It's a favicon thing.
Why doesn't Safari show me favicons any more? :: Online Tech Support Help :: Ask Dave Taylor!®

and here:
Favicons in Safari ? - MacRumors Forums

Thanks that was really helpful.

No problem.

Hmmm, doesn't seem to work....

Did you recently "reset Safari" from the Safari main menu? One of the things that a reset will do - unless you removed the check from the box - is remove all Favorite Icons from bookmarks.

The way to get them back is to re-visit each site in turn.

yep i did a clear cache and a reset. Now i'm revisiting my faces and still all i get is the blue balls, not the favicons.

The think is, I used to have them all before, just like the mini icons that show up in the faves list in Internet explorer.
I'm pretty sure I still had them when I upgraded to OSX Lion.
All I get now is the blue balls. I can't recall exactly when I lost them all, maybe a month ago? Did they update Safari?

Seems in past versions of Safari, I remember a pop up asking if you wanted Safari to put all those favicons back when you opened the 'Show All Bookmarks' after a reset. Doesn't do that any longer. I've not found a way to put them back except as chscag suggested by visiting each site.

Don't know whether it's a Safari change or Lion - but it is now using a webpageicons.db file instead of the icons folder Dave Taylor suggests.

Yes I tried to find the icons folder with no luck. If the db file is read-only then there's now no way of getting the new favicons or the revisited ones showing up. I've been revisiting all my old top sites but all I get is still blue balls. Will try and find the webpageicons.db file and check write access on it.

It's in the same location as Dave Taylor pointed you to. If the db file is corrupt, you can just move it to the desktop or trash and let it start over again. Safari will recreate the file with the first site you visit. Need to quit Safari and restart it.

Just tried it on my system - that's the place they're being stored now - but still no automatic way to have Safari go out and get them all.

db deleted, it created a new one - it was set to read/write anyway. Revisiting the sites but still no favicons appearing.
What's happening?

This is the weirdest thing, starting to browse tonight all my favicons have slowly started to return. Who pulled the lever? I love you!

Patience pays off. The problem is that it takes forever to get them all back the way they were before. Same thing happened to me some time ago. A real pain.