Migrating from 4.6 to 4.8 seems to cause several panel settings to be lost. From the downstream report: After the move from xfce 4.6 to 4.8 was completed as part of my upgrading to openSUSE_11.4, a handful of xfce settings were lost, particularly the taskbar was restored to its previous state, for example - showing the four workspace thumbnails again that I had previously deactivated - changed my Lock Screen button back to Logout - panel height restored to default - panel has move handles again
The action buttons was indeed incorrect migration (fixed in 6bf9caa), however the other options seem to be fine in the code. I can only check if with the 4.6 configuration attached, you can reopen the bug then.