Up to openSuse 12.2, I was able to navigate in the Anwendungstarter by leaving the search field via the cursor DOWN key and then entering the first character of the list item I want to go to. Starting with openSuse 12.3, I have to scroll in the list. Does someone know of a way to go back to the "old" navigation style? My current KDE version is 4.11.2.

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be an option, and it appears to be intended behaviour.