On a number of occasions I have selected something from the menu (recently, Favorites) and nothing has apparently happened. However, when I manually close the home page the Favorites panel had opened. Also, happened with a Search.
Also, I have found that even when the home page is not displayed, some items do not show on the main window. Some even disappeared until I re-opened and closed the home page.
I noticed the home page behavior last night with "Tools" such as Highlighting and Favorites. We'll file a bug and look into it. Thanks for the report!