enabling slugs for my non-blog pages

hello –

i’d like to have “pretty permalinks” for my non-blog pages. i have inserted the correct page name (such as ‘contact’ or ‘about us’ etc..) into the “slug” line in the “quick edit” window on WP 2.7, but my links are still “ugly”. is there something else i must enable for this work?

i did some reading that i said i had to upload a .htaccess file and give it the “666” permissions. i tried that but it didn’t help.

any ideas?

thanks.