This is what you see on a freshly installed KDE, assuming that you skipped KPersonalizer. If you are using lower resolution, some of the icons may not appear immediately. To cater for those smaller resolutions, the screenshot below is divided in two parts.
Here's a screenshot of the left side of Kicker
And here's the right side
Of course, this is only one way Kicker might appear on the screen. There are many more configurations available.
If you are experienced with this kind of application launcher, you can ignore this chapter and move on to Kicker basics.
The main use of Kicker is starting applications. This is done by clicking icons, either from the panel or from the Menu. Kicker shows some more things too, so let's see.
Having a look at the screenshots above, there are from left to right:
It is used for launching applications and some other useful things. Refer to The Menu for more information.
Here are some icons of commonly used applications. They can be moved and removed and others can be added. Some of them have a special meaning, which you can read more about in Kicker basics. Resting the mouse over an icon without clicking shows the name and a short description of that application, if you have set that in the Settings Dialog.
This displays a small view of the virtual desktops. Clicking one section of it will activate that desktop. Please refer to Applets.
All running applications are displayed as buttons in the taskbar. Clicking an application's button will bring this application on top. If it was on top before, it will be iconified. As always, more information in Applets.
This applet contains two small buttons. The one with the luggage lock on it locks your session if you ever leave your KDE unattended and don't want anybody else to have access to it; the other one shuts down KDE and the X-Server.
The system tray is able to swallow some kind of applications like - in this case - Klipper. There are also more useful apps for the system tray. You can click the applications either with the or the mousebutton and see what's happening.
The Clock applet is - of course - a small, useful clock. It can have various styles, have a look at the applets section for more information.
This button lets you fade out Kicker for having more space on the screen. When Kicker is faded out, only the button will remain in order to fade in Kicker again.
This was only the description of Kicker on its initial launch. It can be configured in many ways and styles and more applets can be added. There are even some extensions like the external taskbar you can add. See Kicker basics, Applets and Extensions for more information.