Setting up http redirect

I was trying to setup a http redirect on ubuntu. Spent quite some time.
1) Ubuntu has a

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default

file where you will have to change the AllowOverride option from None to All.
Only this step will enable you to use .htaccess file.
2) In the .htaccess file, I was doing

Redirect 302 ./index.html http://localhost/new.html

Spent more than a hour to figure out, why the redirect is not happening. The problem was, I was doing

./index.html

instead of just

/index.html