I can easily tell KDE4's Konqueror "open in tabs" when folders are selected, and it opens a new tab for each
I am not about tabs, but about windows.
I assume it'd be easy to create .desktop files for the other special locations you'd want, like Trash and whatnot. Naturally I haven't bothered since I generally use neither KDE4 nor the "desktop" on my laptop, but you know.
What the desktop file should be for storage media in KDE4? It it not like a physical folder.
KDE3.5 had pre-made desktop files for those locations including translations to other languages. So it you change the locale, ypu'll see the icon description in a new language.