Second time lucky, it connected correctly this time. The problem is likely my network connection, my telco pulled fibre in to my house, but the pull looks to have disturbed the 40+ year old cat3 that provides my ADSL connection and the ADSL has become unreliable and I haven’t managed to move to the fibre yet (I’m not sure that I can given the virus 
.)
These two sets of tutorials apply to the latest Fritzing version, most of the others are for older versions of Fritzing (but largely still apply other than parts editor which is a late addition and not yet finished.)
Not that I am aware of. Some folks use pcb view (where unlike breadboard, you can view the board looking up from the bottom) to do perf board like layouts. If you don’t need this exact layout for some reason (such as you are trying to document a real device built on perfboard) then either perf board or the breadboards may make things easier to see. PCB view may be a better and easier bet, in that the parts are already all “top view” and you can suppress connections by View-> hide any of the various layers. Note Fritzing has a bad habit of stacking parts on top of each other so you may have to select a component and drag it to get to components under it (this often confuses new users.) Assuming breadboard is wired correctly, selecting a rats nest line in pcb and double clicking on it will make a connection (which can then be dragged to position it) to the correct pins.
This can probably be done with custom parts, but making the parts isn’t all that easy until you learn how (it took me about a year to learn enough so that I can now make parts quickly.) Feel free to ask if you need help!
Peter