July 20th, 2021

Why does the New menu even exist for creating new empty files?

Raymond Chen

What’s the point of having a New menu anyway? “Why would anybody create a new BMP file by right-clicking an empty space in a folder? You still need a BMP editor to put anything meaningful in there. The same is true for a PowerPoint presentation, and an Access database. Although, creating an empty Access database and then opening it will presumably get you the Access program. But if I want to create a new PowerPoint presentation, I will… um… open PowerPoint.”

Sure, maybe that’s what you do, but that’s not what everybody does.

Not everybody knows that the way to create a new BMP file is to open this program called Paint that is hidden in the Accessories folder of your Start menu. User research shows that for many users, the way they create a new file is to find an existing file of the same type, copy it, then open the copy and delete everything in it.¹

In fact, in the Xerox Star (the precursor to our modern GUI interfaces), creating a new document is done by copying an existing one.

For people with a document-centric view of the world, programs aren’t really things that you think about. What you really work on are documents.

It’s like making a telephone call in the United States. You don’t think about which telecommunications company serves that number. You just dial the number and let the telephone network figure out which telecommunications company is responsible for that number. You don’t really care which company gets used, as long as you get connected.

As other people noted in the comments, having a New menu is handy because it lets you create the file directly where you want it, saving you the trouble of having to navigate through the Save As dialog just to get back to where you started.

¹ And who among us can say they never created a new class or project by copying an existing one, and then deleting everything inside?

Even Unix follows this pattern for process creation! To create a new process, you clone an existing one (fork) and then delete everything inside it (exec).

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

29 comments

Discussion is closed. Login to edit/delete existing comments.

Sort by :

Newest

Newest Popular Oldest

M. W. July 22, 2021 · Edited 0

I for one hope this function isn't removed because it is MUCH more convenient to create a file in a folder that's already open than to run the program (and wait for it to open if it's a big, bulky, bloated monster), create a new document, then slog through the Save-As dialog to re-navigate to the folder that I already had open (while trying to accidentally save in the wrong folder or accidentally close it...
Read more
I for one hope this function isn’t removed because it is MUCH more convenient to create a file in a folder that’s already open than to run the program (and wait for it to open if it’s a big, bulky, bloated monster), create a new document, then slog through the Save-As dialog to re-navigate to the folder that I already had open (while trying to accidentally save in the wrong folder or accidentally close it and have to start over again) and then save the file.

This is especially true since I don’t always intend to actually create the file right there and then, often I want to create a file, give a descriptive name about what it will be, then work on it LATER.

The Xerox thing is weird. To make a new document, you have to copy an existing one, but where did the original -chicken- -egg- document come from? If a compiler is written in itself, where did its original compiler come from? Did God create himself? 🤔 Who knew computers could be so existentially philosophical? 🤷

Read less
Gunnar Dalsnes July 21, 2021 0

Eg. if sharing stuff on eg. Android I will get the choice of what app i want to share with. With same logic it would make sense that New gave a choice of what app I want to use to create and open the new and empty file? I assume in most cases the user will open the new and empty file immediately after, not being happy with just having created an empty file?
Pados Károly July 21, 2021 · Edited 0

This was probably a good justification 15-20 years ago, but for a very long time now this method pretty much only works for your office suit documents. For the most common files, your standard program to open images is not an image editor, the standard program to open PDFs is not a PDF editor, and the standard program to open multimedia files is not your DAW or video editor. And so on.

This explains though why...
Read more
This was probably a good justification 15-20 years ago, but for a very long time now this method pretty much only works for your office suit documents. For the most common files, your standard program to open images is not an image editor, the standard program to open PDFs is not a PDF editor, and the standard program to open multimedia files is not your DAW or video editor. And so on.

This explains though why when I open up the New menu today, I only see entries for Office documents, Text files, and Photoshop. For these types of files, yes the menu choices make sense. But now there’s a discrepancy how to create new files. “For these types of files you can do ‘this’ [use the New menu], and for other types you have to do ‘that’ [start the correct app and go from there].”

Frankly, while I do understand that you shouldn’t need to know the name of the program to open files, this does not reflect reality when creating or editing new files. You might not care or know what your standard viewer is, but people who create and edit files do know what their editor is.

Read less
Max Strini July 20, 2021 · Edited 0

I always thought of this as:

Notepad is an app for viewing and editing text files, which contain characters. It lets you delete, change, and move/copy existing characters, and also add (type) new characters.

Explorer is an app for viewing and editing folders, which contain files. So it makes sense that besides deleting, changing, and moving/copying existing files, it also lets you add (create) new files. 😊

Maybe not literally true, but a nice mental model to...
Read more
I always thought of this as:

Notepad is an app for viewing and editing text files, which contain characters. It lets you delete, change, and move/copy existing characters, and also add (type) new characters.

Explorer is an app for viewing and editing folders, which contain files. So it makes sense that besides deleting, changing, and moving/copying existing files, it also lets you add (create) new files. 😊

Maybe not literally true, but a nice mental model to entertain for a few moments’ entertainment!

Read less
Leverette, Jack July 20, 2021 0

Tangential, but germane—I wonder at least weekly why WinOS lacks a native touch command. (as a native cmd command, system32 exe or even something in PowerShell or pwsh). Just something easy to call on from a shell.
- Andy Cadley July 25, 2021 0
  
  You can mimic touch by just setting LastWriteTime on a file in PowerShell. Would be fairly easy to alias it if you do it often enough I suspect.
- Richard Russell July 21, 2021 0
  I have touch.bat in my path containing:
```
@if exist %1 (copy /b %1+ > NUL) else (copy NUL %1 > NUL)
```
  which handles both creating an empty file and updating the timestamp on an existing file.
- Miguel Hernandez July 20, 2021 0
  
  I’ve used copy con file.txt. Not as easy as touch and not scriptable since it requires ctrl+z to save the empty file.
  - Andrä Hubl July 20, 2021 0
    Use
    
    copy nul file.txt
  - Neil Rashbrook July 21, 2021 0
    
    Interestingly this didn’t work with COMMAND.COM which would just say “0 file(s) copied.”; instead I believe you could use rem > file.txt (note that this doesn’t work for CMD.EXE).
  - M. W. July 22, 2021 0
    
    REM doesn’t work, it comments out the redirection, but REN will work.
M. C. Battilana July 20, 2021 0

I like the "that's not what everybody does" thinking.

By that logic, why not restore the beloved Recent Items entry in the Start menu? You could even fix it, by allowing Open File location to work even if the file was renamed (after all, it is the location you want to access). Sure, you now have something similar on a per-app basis. But that's not what everybody does :)

And the beloved Quick Launch Toolbar also had...
Read more
I like the “that’s not what everybody does” thinking.

By that logic, why not restore the beloved Recent Items entry in the Start menu? You could even fix it, by allowing Open File location to work even if the file was renamed (after all, it is the location you want to access). Sure, you now have something similar on a per-app basis. But that’s not what everybody does 🙂

And the beloved Quick Launch Toolbar also had one good thing that was lost with all the recent innovation: you could put many small “launcher” icons at predictable, immutable locations which would not jump around, and which you could access by muscle memory alone. Why not restore something similar, perhaps blending in the more powerful right-click taskbar menu options?

While I enjoy always using the latest, I so very badly miss both features of older systems.

Read less
Semi Essessi July 20, 2021 0

As a programmer I use this constantly. VS code handles making new files OK… But making a new file in VS proper is so easy to get wrong that I never use it to make new files.

I’ve worked at a few places where there is a strong guideline to never create files with VS due to the bad default locations and poor handling of additions to the project and filter files.
Mike Morrison July 20, 2021 0

"As other people noted in the comments, having a New menu is handy because it lets you create the file directly where you want it, saving you the trouble of having to navigate through the Save As dialog just to get back to where you started." That may work for a document-centric view of the world, but for other viewpoints, that process doesn't make sense. Personall,y I don't see the point in navigating...
Read more
“As other people noted in the comments, having a New menu is handy because it lets you create the file directly where you want it, saving you the trouble of having to navigate through the Save As dialog just to get back to where you started.” That may work for a document-centric view of the world, but for other viewpoints, that process doesn’t make sense. Personall,y I don’t see the point in navigating to the place where I want to store the file, then creating a new one, and then filling in the content; I start the program first, to get my ideas down on “paper” so to speak, and then save it in a folder of my choosing. So there’s no “just to get back to where you started” in this viewpoint because I started with the editor program, not the destination folder.

Read less
- M. W. July 22, 2021 0
  
  You're assuming that you're navigating to the folder in order to make a new file. In most cases, you'd already have the folder open for other reasons like organizing or processing files and then create a new one in there while you already have it open. Moreover, it's much easier to navigate to a folder in the File Explorer than it is to navigate to a folder in the Save As dialog (even though they're—usually—essentially...
  Read more
  You’re assuming that you’re navigating to the folder in order to make a new file. In most cases, you’d already have the folder open for other reasons like organizing or processing files and then create a new one in there while you already have it open. Moreover, it’s much easier to navigate to a folder in the File Explorer than it is to navigate to a folder in the Save As dialog (even though they’re—usually—essentially the same thing, the Save As dialog is smaller and has pitfalls like accelerator keys that can trip things up).
  
  Read less
  - Mike Morrison July 26, 2021 0
    
    "You’re assuming that you’re navigating to the folder in order to make a new file." I was replying to Raymond's assertion about users' workflows and "getting back to where you started" when using save-as in an app. Maybe you do have your target folder open in a window when working in an editor app. I personally don't, but I'm not here to advocate my own way or working as the One True...
    Read more
    “You’re assuming that you’re navigating to the folder in order to make a new file.” I was replying to Raymond’s assertion about users’ workflows and “getting back to where you started” when using save-as in an app. Maybe you do have your target folder open in a window when working in an editor app. I personally don’t, but I’m not here to advocate my own way or working as the One True Way. There are more workflows than users (when you consider that user workflows evolve over time as users learn new shortcuts, new UI elements, new software, etc), all of which are valid.
    
    If you have your target folder open, and you dislike browsing folders in the Save As dialog, then you can simply copy the address from the open window into the dialog box. That’ll circumvent those pitfalls that you’ve mention and is nearly as quick as the New menu.
    
    Read less
Mystery Man July 20, 2021 0

Apparently, things have changed. Windows 11 has gotten rid of the New menu. A Microsoft blog post says the Windows development team is disposing of the unused context menu items based on telemetry.
- Entegy July 22, 2021 0
  
  Windows 11 still has the New menu, and it was migrated to the new context menu. I don’t think things migrated to the new context menu would be going away! It’s still early though.
Ivan K July 20, 2021 0

mspaint… and then you have to remember that ctrl^s will overwrite an existing file haha meh.
- Alexey Badalov July 20, 2021 · Edited 0
  
  What else might you expect it to do? This is what every other application does.
  - Martin Ba July 21, 2021 0
    
    Not exactly *every* other application:
    The Photo Viewer Applications I know will default to save a copy if you do edits in a photo.
    I’m not faulting mspaint, being the simple bmp editor it is, to just overwrite the current image file on save.
    Seeing as other concurrent programs that display (and edit) images do not necessarily do this, this can be annoying.
  - M. W. July 22, 2021 0
    
    Indeed, while Ctrl+S might usually be Save, sometimes it’s Save-As, and sometimes it’s something completely different, especially in programs that don’t even create files.