Hi i am new to 3d studio. I am trying to follow a tutorial, but in the tutorial you can see the texture that gets applied to the object in the perspective viewport. In my material Editor, I clicked the button that says "show texture in viewport" and it causes a slight change in the shade of gray on my plane, but it doesn't display the texture (which I can clearly see if i do a render). What's wrong? The texture is a 235x586x24 bitmap

It sounds like you're activating the view textures for a map and not the material... make sure you are at the top level of the texture (press the little arrow next to the 'View Material in Viewport' button) until its greyed out, THEN use the view texture in viewport button.

Professor420 it was definately something along those lines. That day it was real late, and as I hazily tapped away at my kb I must have mised something. I tried the next day and it worked just the way I thought it should, so I really don't know what I was doing wrong. Thanks bro!