HI! I propose a "new material" button. It would be in the materials panel and be always displayed last. (I think just a dark square with a "+" on it would be best) this way when you are tinkering with materials you wouldn't need to go to the upper menu. (more accesible and easy)

What exactly is wrong with the upper menu "Materials > New material" ? I'd rather see valuable development time go to options which currently are not existing (like scaling without snapping to grid) rather than moving/replacing the UI. In my opinion the current ways of creating new materials is fine. 

well, this would be as imple button to make faster the workflow. I would also prefer to see scaling without snapping implemented than this, but I don't see how they're in conflict with each other.