Does anyone know if this still works in kde 4?

When I installed Fedora Core 3, Gnome had a handy "Show Desktop Button" on its panel. This is very useful for quickly gaining access to your CD drive for example ... or quickly hiding your work (then again a clear desktop looks a bit suspcious...). When I switched to KDE it did not have a Show Desktop button on the panel by default. Here's how to add one:

Right-click the Panel; Click on "Add" then "Special Buttons" and Choose "Desktop Access".
After this you can drag it anywhere you want by right-clicking it and choosing "Move Desktop Access Button". I like mine beside the menu launcher. By the way CTRL-ALT-D does the same thing.

If you only want to show your dashboard you can bring it up and hide it with Ctrl+F12. If you want a show desktop button in your panel right click it select "Unlock Widgets" -> click on the new icon that has appeared in the panel (the "cashew") -> "Add Widgets" -> search for the "show desktop" widget and double click to add it to your panel. If you want to move it to another place, click the cashew again, hover over the "Show Desktop" icon in your panel and drag it to another place.

edit: and by the way it is a good idea to lock your widgets afterwards again.


If you are not yet familiar with plasma and the terms I mentioned sound strange to you, I would recommend to have a look at http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma and eventually watch the screencasts which are linked there.