In the Browse window, with Cards mode in effect, you can right-click on a line to get the popup menu, then select Grade Now… to get the Grade Now dialog window.
The right-click popup menu is displayed at the location of the cursor, which is convenient.
However, the Grade Now window shows up at the center of the Browse window, which is not so convenient. It would make more sense for it to also appear at the location of the cursor. Same for the Set Due Date window and possibly others.
Perhaps it’s a minor inconvenience to move the mouse, but I have “New cards/day” set to zero, so for me the only way a card ever transitions from New to Learning is manually via Grade Now, so the irritation kind of adds up over time. Although to be sure, it can be mitigated by using keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse (Ctrl-Shift-G, then Tabs).
You can increase the new card limit for a single day in the deck options.
That’s not what I want, though. The “New cards/day” mechanism selects New cards automatically, whereas I only want to select individual New cards manually. So I keep “New cards/day” permanently turned off.
In case anyone cares why:
I use Anki for language learning self-study. When I create a card, I usually don’t want to start studying it right away. Maybe it’s some bit of vocabulary that’s too uncommon for my current level and trying to learn it would be premature.
I try to learn passive vocabulary organically and gradually over time through consuming comprehensible input, so I use Anki not for cram memorization or learning of previously unknown words, but rather for review and maintenance and for boosting passive vocabulary into active vocabulary.
Language learning is different from areas like medical study, in that most of the “boosts” to remembering a vocabulary item come not solely from periodic Anki reviews but rather from encountering it in the wild, usually merely in passing. If a vocabulary item is uncommon enough (at my current language learning level) that I’d only be encountering it via Anki reviews and never in the wild, then adding it to the repertoire for spaced repetition would be premature.
So I have a large set of cards that remain “suspended” in New indefinitely. Each New card only transitions to the Learning state manually via Grade Now, never by the automatic gathering mechanism of “New cards/day”.
Before Grade Now was introduced as a feature, I did this in a more cumbersome way by flagging individual cards and then having a filtered deck that filtered on is:new and that particular flag.
TL;DR:
Conceptually, this is like every card starting life as “Mature” at birth, and letting the gestation process of going from New to Learning to Young to Mature be handled externally rather than within Anki.