docs: Modernize README with professional structure and enhanced maintainability

[ogkae]

📋 Summary

Comprehensive README overhaul focusing on modern design patterns, improved maintainability, and professional presentation standards for open source projects.

🎯 Changes Made

Structure & Organization

• ✅ Added ASCII art section headers for better visual navigation
• ✅ Implemented reference-style links and badges (centralizes all URLs at bottom)
• ✅ Consistent indentation and formatting throughout entire document
• ✅ Organized badges into primary (for-the-badge) and secondary (flat-square) tiers

Content Improvements

• ✅ Enhanced "About" section with feature grid layout
• ✅ Added comprehensive browser support table with official logos
• ✅ Included expandable technical details sections (Architecture & Performance)
• ✅ Improved usage examples with real-world queries
• ✅ Added clear contributing guidelines with direct action links

Maintainability

• ✅ Centralized all badge definitions at document end
• ✅ Centralized all link references for easy updates
• ✅ Added descriptive alt text to all images
• ✅ Included inline comments explaining each section's purpose

Visual Enhancements

• ✅ Maintained original hero image and installation buttons
• ✅ Improved table layouts for better readability
• ✅ Added proper spacing and visual hierarchy
• ✅ Enhanced accessibility with semantic HTML attributes

🔍 Why These Changes?

Before: Scattered links and badges throughout the document made updates tedious and diffs noisy.

After: Reference-style approach means:

• Single source of truth for all URLs
• Cleaner git diffs (link changes don't affect content lines)
• Easier to review and maintain
• Industry standard for professional OSS projects

📸 Preview

The new README maintains all existing content while adding:

• Professional code organization
• Better visual hierarchy
• Improved scannability
• Enhanced maintainability

✅ Checklist

• All links tested and working
• Images load correctly
• Tables render properly
• Badges display correctly
• No broken references
• Markdown lints without errors
• Maintains backward compatibility (all original links preserved)

🎨 Design Philosophy

Following best practices from top OSS projects:

• Reference-style links (React, Vue, TypeScript use this)
• Commented sections for maintainer clarity
• Semantic structure for accessibility
• Clean syntax for easy contributions

📝 Notes

• No functionality changes
• All original URLs and badges preserved
• Pure documentation improvement
• Zero breaking changes

---

Type: Documentation
Breaking Changes: None
Related Issues: N/A

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[adamlui]

@ogkae that is very nice!

[ogkae]

Thank you! It's been a while since I reviewed readmes HAHAHA