General Nvu-specific trouble

I'm having basic trouble with Nvu and a template. I don't have trouble making basic edits to a page in Dreamweaver, so I think I'm doing something wrong in Nvu.

So, I open the .HTML file in Nvu, switch between different views, Preview, Code, HTML Tags, etc. All is good so far. But I do ONE THING... I save the file with a new name, or I edit one character... and all the formatting goes away. Images, all gone. text boxes in vastly different order. This happens before I save. This happens right in Nvu, without previewing in a browswer.

What's happening? Do I have to turn on some sort of editing button in Nvu? Am I breaking the link between web page and .CSS file?

I don't want to pay for Dreamweaver. Nvu looked capable, but if there's something better, I'd like to know.

And I can't look at bare naked code and see a website, so Notepad won't work for me.

Thanks for any help!

 

Thank you, I'll try Kompozer next. I tested it again last night, twice, and simply changing one letter of text in a website completely destroys the formatting and breaks the links to all images.

This is not a good attribute in an HTML editor.