How to create a new blank file in Nautilus 3.6 and above?

Well, I filled a bug report on bugzilla.gnome.org and I feel stupid now... This feature still exists.

The solution is to create a blank file named for instance new inside the ~/Templates/ folder of your home directory.

→ On non-English installations, the templates directory might have another name. One can find the actual directory with xdg-user-dir TEMPLATES.

---

If you're still facing the problem, Check the file in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs if XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR variable is set correctly. If it is set to $HOME/ instead of $HOME/Templates/, correct and save that file.

Just create some file templates in your home Templates directory:

XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR=$(xdg-user-dir TEMPLATES)
cd "$XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR"
touch 'New Text File.txt' && touch 'New Word File.doc' && touch 'New Excel Spreadsheet.xls'

Go to any folder then, right click and you will see the "New Document" option with the templates you created.

I can't really find this option in 3.6 either, but there are command line tools that can help you out (but it depends on what you are actually trying to accomplish here).

In a Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) you can write the command:

 touch filename.ext 

This will create an empty file called filename.ext - you can call it whatever you want, with whatever extension (or no extension) you feel like.