But once you're familiar with the route, going to B becomes a tedious experience. You're an experienced driver now, you know what to do not to make any mistakes.

Which is exactly the reason I did say *some* and not *all*....

Yea, I use one called NuFile. There is a slight issue though, in that you have to click empty space in Finder, this isn't always so easy especially when viewing in column view. Same thing applies to the Right Click > New Folder, but ofcourse this has a shortcut key.

I don't see why you should need to click on empty space to use a contextual menu item.
I haven't tried it (since it's not something I need) but I think this (create empty text file) would be easy to implement using OnMyCommand.
(The command would be: touch name_of_file.txt)

It all depends on how often I go from A to C and the relative amount of extra travel time. Users (or drivers) don't usually like to optimize for time unless it is really necessary. They prefer to optimize for not-having-to-learn-something-new.

And in any case, in user-interface design, even providing the direct route from A to C might be a bad idea for the complexity reasons I explained above. That would be analogous to a road designer opting not to put a direct route from A to C because of other countervailing factors (noise, destruction of green space, etc).

Navigate to a folder that's got lots of files in it in column view. Right click and try to make a new folder in it!

The only space is at the bottom, but if you have so many icons that it makes the column scrollable then it's kinda hard.

Nothing to do with Mac elitists. It's an issue that has always puzzled most Mac users. Why would a user want a blank text file?

It's not that a user would want a blank text file, it's that in Windows the notepad is located on the Start-->All Programs-->Accesories-->Note Pad.
It's much quicker to just right-click and creat new a text file.
You can add a short-cut to the dekstop in Windows or to the Dock in Tiger.
Now that I'm used to the Dock shortcut in Tiger, I don't miss the "creat new empty file"

Switching from Macs to Windows or Windows to Macs is like switching from an Automatic Transmission to a Standard Transmission.
Each has it's benifits and draw backs. You'll also find which ever you learn on first is usually the one you favor more.

Say you have a finder window open, and you decide you want a text file right there, right click > new txt file is far quicker than...

opening textedit and then going therough the save as procedure. Which is far from a 2 step process, especially if you don't have textedit on your dock.
--
The file is only blank for a couple seconds, because as soon as you've created it and named it, you double click it to open it to edit. Then when you wanna save all you gotta do is cmd-s.

You're not really going to make a mountain out of THAT molecule...
are you?

-HI-

What you are talking about is the behaviour of the standard "New Folder" item in the contextual menu - or to be more precise, the fact that this item is only present in the contextual menu when the mouse is clicked over blank space in the Finder window.
That is true, and is a deficit of that standard contextual menu item.

But what I was recommending above is that you should create your own contextual menu item using OnMyCommand - in which case you can make it behave the way you want. It can appear (if you want) whether or not you click over a file or a folder or blank space - you are in control of what it does and when it appears.

I work on a site that has over 40,000 files. In a day I create many txt and php files. So from my POV, the faster I can create those files the better. It all adds up.

You just gotta understand things like cut>paste and right click>new file, although have valid alternatives, those alternatives just aren't as fast and to a user like me it's very important that the OS just lets me do what I wanna do as fast and as efficient as possible.

that sounds good, I'll check it out. thanks.

How about creating a blank file, saving it somewhere and adding it to the "Dock"? Then to "create" a blank one in a given location, ⌘-drag it from the "Dock" to the Finder window, letting go of the ?-key and and pressing the ⌥ (option) key before letting go, to create a copy.

It isn't as easy as using a contextual menu and it uses up "Dock" space, but it doesn't require any additional software, and would work with any file type - blank, or template.

I think what many of the long-time mac users are missing here is the fact that we should be helping switchers transition as painlessly as possible. Scoffing at the way they did things on Windows does very little to make a switcher feel like they made the right choice to change platforms.

I would agree that some of the responses to questions from switchers has been, well, snooty. Get off your high horses. If you don't have a solution, or can't recommend a better Mac solution without looking down your nose, then don't respond. It doesn't solve their problem, and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

I've been a Mac user since 1992, and a dual-platformer since 1999, and I can attest that the support and advice I've gotten from Windows people has been a lot kinder and more courteous than I usually see from the Mac end.

And for the record, I think cut would be a great option in the Finder. When I copy, it's 3 steps: copy, paste, then go back and delete my original. Cut would shorten that to two steps. For those of us on tight deadlines, you'd be suprised how we love every bit of efficiency we can squeeze out of our macs.

How about we keep this thread to the topic of the question and leave the evaluations of responders' personalities out of it.

And when -- one day perhaps -- you accidentally cut twice before pasting,
and lose files as a result... how efficiently will your deadline be met then?

"Sorry boss, the OS let me do it".

Command-drag is somewhat safer.

Someone mentioned that this can be done with one window. Let me add to that. If you use the same destination a lot you can drag the destination folder into the sidebar of any finder window. From then on it will be available in all finder windows. You can also drag a window into the area to the right of the view and forward/back buttons in Finder windows.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is better or preferred to what you are looking for, just that it's available as a workaround.

You can't cut twice in Windows, and we know you can't cut at all in OS X, at least not in Finder.

Doing a second 'cut' negates the first cut in Windows.

You can't double-cut, at least not in Windows. My deadline is safe, and met more efficiently.

It's not so much personalities as it is attitude; but my intent wasn't to demean, just a plea for more kindness to the switchers.

Is there somewhere in the forum where that topic can be discussed (with civility)?

If not, consider the issue dropped.