How to make shortcuts?

I seem to have installed Thunderbird, but I can't get a shortcut icon to appear in the K Menu. I installed the RPM for Nvu, and an icon was placed in the Menu. The file for Thunderbird was a tar.gz. I expanded the gz and clicked on the she file to install. It didn't seem like anything happened, but when I click on a file called just Thunderbird (not the traditional icon) the program opens, and I'm writing in it now. Is the program actually installed? Where should it be physically. How can I instruct SuSE to make a shortcut icon where I want it? Thanks in advance. Avraham