A couple of things that make life easier in kde.

Quicklaunch buttons on the panel. I have not found a way to add these with KDE4. Is it possible?

Having more than 5 recently used applications showing on the menu. Can this be configured in KDE4?

Go into the KDE Menu and right-click on the application name. In the context menu, you'll have the possibility to add the application in the panel or in the desktop.

Be sure that the "lock plasmoids" option is not selected in your panel configuration (right-click on the panel to check that in the context menu).

Thanks.

I figured that much out in my fighting with KDE 4 on Slack13 yesterday. But what if the app you want to add to the panel isn't IN the KDE menu?

It's this kind of idiocy that causes me to reject KDE 4 in general. This is pretty basic, intuitive functionality here (like having a "link to application" option when right-clicking on the desktop? Hello? Hellll-ooooooo?).

That's what tells me KDE 4 needs quite a lot more work before it's usable.

I had the same problem with Firefox. The app was not in the Internet menu.

I toggled to Classic menu (right-click on the K-menu button). For whatever reason, Firefox was in the Lost and Found menu. Usually that means the firefox.desktop config file does not provide an XDG compliant menu location. I haven't investigated further. I then started the menu editor. With the menu editor, I moved Firefox into the Internet menu and then saved the changes. Toggling back to the Kickoff style menu showed Firefox in the Internet menu. I then could right-click on the option and add Firefox to the Quick Launch area.

Frustrating for a couple of hours. Very frustrating. But now I know. [shrug]

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking; if you want to add an app to quicklaunch, right click > add icon > qo to /usr/share//applications and select what you want from the .desktop files, it will show up as an icon in quicklaunch.

This post may help you:

You can just drag an icon from Classic menu to desktop or panel.