The right way to assign materials is using "Assign material to selection." The fast way to access that is to right-click on the material in the hypershade editor. So select your object or polygons or whatever in one of the mesh views, right-click on the material in the hypershade window, and select "assign material to selection" from the popup menu.
I'm rather curious how you were changing materials without using the hypershade editor; your second post makes reference to discovering the hypershade window. The hypershade window is analogous to, say, the Materials Editor in 3D Studio Max.
I'm rather curious how you were changing materials without using the hypershade editor; your second post makes reference to discovering the hypershade window. The hypershade window is analogous to, say, the Materials Editor in 3D Studio Max.