Opening a project
The welcome screen, the folder you keep projects in, cloning a private repository, and starting something new.
FEWD Studio opens on a welcome screen rather than an empty window, because the first thing you want is almost always a project you already have.
The folder you keep projects in
Point FEWD at the folder where your sites live — Projects → Choose… — and it lists everything inside it as a grid of cards.
It looks three levels down, because a site is so often inside a folder named for the client rather than for the site. The folder is remembered, so this is a once-ever step.
Each card carries a picture of the site: a capture of the preview taken from the top of the home page. A column of identical labels is a list you read; a wall of pictures is one you recognise. A project you have never opened shows its initials on a colour of its own until there is something to photograph.
A project whose folder has moved or gone is marked Moved or deleted rather than opening as an empty session pointing at nothing. Clicking it asks where the folder went.
Recent projects
A strip along the bottom, newest on the left. It scrolls with a trackpad, shift-wheel or the keyboard, and there are arrows for a mouse with none of those.
A folder somewhere else
Open a folder that isn’t in here… takes any folder on the machine. It does not have to live in your projects folder and it is not moved there.
From a private repository
From GitHub… signs you in with a device code, lists the repositories you can push to, and asks where the project should land before it clones anything. You get progress while it clones, an offer to install its dependencies, and then the project opens. Git works in a downloaded project straight away; running its code (the preview, an install, a terminal) still asks you first.
The download folder is remembered. If your welcome screen has no projects folder yet, it adopts the same one — a repository downloaded somewhere the welcome screen cannot see is one you then have to go and find.
Starting something new
New Project is three steps in order: the directory it goes in, the type, and the name.
The types are HTML, Astro and Shopify. HTML gives you a plain folder of files. Astro scaffolds a real Astro project and installs it, which needs Node on the machine. Shopify sets up for theme work.
Start with a blank canvas → skips all of it and opens the editor with nothing connected, which is the right move for trying something out.
Before it opens
If the project is a git repository, FEWD checks where it stands with its remote before opening — so you find out that you are twelve commits behind before you start editing rather than when you try to push.
That dialog can be cancelled. Escape works, and cancelling leaves whatever you had open exactly as it was.
Opening a project does not run it. If the folder is not one FEWD downloaded for you, it asks Trust this folder? before Git or the preview run anything of its own. Not now leaves the project open and editable.
If the project has no node_modules, you are offered an install, and nothing
installs until you press Install. The dialog reminds you to open only projects
you trust, installs a project with a lockfile at the exact versions it lists, and
skips packages’ own scripts unless you untick that option. Declining leaves the
project open and usable.