When you open the MATLAB R2012b for the first time, you will notice three tabs -- the Home tab, the Plots tab, and the Apps tab. These three tabs are always there no matter what you are doing in MATLAB. For that reason, they are called global tabs. The Home tab, shown below, is where you go to do general purpose operations like creating new files, importing data, managing your workspace, and setting your Desktop layout.

The Plots tab, shown below, is where you go to create MATLAB Plots. The Plots tab displays a gallery of plots available in MATLAB and any toolboxes that were installed. To create a plot from the gallery, you select the variables in the Workspace that you want to plot and then select the type of visualization you want to use for that data. The downward facing arrow on the far right brings down the full extent of the plot gallery with many more choices. The gallery is smart, only showing plots that are appropriate for the data that you've selected.

The last of the global tabs is the Apps tab, shown below. It is the place you go to run interactive MATLAB applications. The Apps tab presents a gallery of installed applications. The downward facing arrow on the far right brings down the full extent of the applications gallery with many more choices. To start an application you simply click on the correspondent icon.