The reference theme renders no type badge in the featured box; the
swiper and dplayer previews are self-explanatory. Remove it from both
preview branches and delete the now-unused CSS rule.
Replace the static first-image preview with the reference theme's
.new-swiper contract (loop + autoplay + prev/next + pagination) in both
the server-rendered box and the JS re-render, and run auto_fun for
slide covers so new_swiper initializes them.
Match the featured cover buttons row to the reference theme: drop the
dedicated slide button, let the icon-only image picker select multiple
images into a slide cover (single pick stays an image cover), and align
the loaded-state visibility matrix.