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how does responsive design work?

After checking a few dozen articles I am still in the dark how to actually implement a responsive ux-design (I really understood the layout part). A simple example: Bootstrap (CSS framework) collapses toolbar buttons into one drop-down button on mobiles. That's all I need! I'd like to understand just the basics of this very behavior. Does it requires only CSS, or do I need JavaScript too? I actually don't know any other way than JavaScript.
In my apps (IDEs), I usually have lots of toolbar buttons and at a certain breakpoint or width I guess I will have to put them just into a dropdown button, in one way or another, right? The obvious things such as re-arranging layout containers per break-point/width are a piece of cake with CSS; at least this is how it looks.
Update, I am working only with JS based widgets. Mostly generating all HTML.

You can make multiple (for different screen sizes) menus, dropdowns or navbars etc. And then use media queries to just display one of them at a specific screen width ( ie display: none for others). And I think Bootstrap works similarly (It might also use JS).
In this way your design will become responsive, although it will increase file size.

Check GRID. It's a (great) simple guide to responsive design.
http://adamkaplan.me/grid/

After doing lots of research and development; there is basically nothing standard out there for a JS based solution. I checked Dojo, Sencha and some others paid stuff. At the end I did end up with custom JS code. Media queries did only help to some degree, actually just when it comes to moving and sizing layout containers and pictures; but that's pretty much it. Its even better to do it in JS only since calculations become far more accurate and interfere less with your Code.
So to me 'responsive design' has actually no mean at all; its great for regular web-sites but really not for complex ux.
back to square one,
g

bootstrap window management framework

Is anyone aware of an (angularjs / bootstrap based preferably) window management framework. I'm looking like something similar to what elasticsearch is using for their kibana dashboards.
The concepts Im looking for is responsive, panels with mixed content, rows/columns with panels, user can change layout (change size, drag drop panels around) etc.
Thanks!
Sander

Can someone explain responsive functionality over responsive design?

I'm only just getting my head around how to build a responsive design site and in addition to a changing layout, I've also been tasked with functionality which should be responsive at various sizes. For example, on desktop, a link might not exist on a particular element, but then at mobile size, it should not only exist but it should also do something it didn't do at larger sizes.
I can understand using media queries to change the size or position of any particular element in CSS, but how does one go about changing functionality (i.e. JS & HTML) at various breakpoints?
(I'm not sure if the term exists or not, but for lack of a better name I'm going to call it responsive functionality.)

You're describing the difference between responsive design and adaptive design.
Responsive layouts respond to different screen sizes (using flexible
grids and media queries). They will often hide content or apply
different CSS rules on smaller screens.
Adaptive layouts adapt to different screen sizes and/or devices by taking a premeditated approach and optimizing the content that is served to the user.
For example, a responsive design might simply hide a sidebar on smaller resolutions while an adaptive design might show content specific to mobile devices (because the website knows the user is on a phone).
There are some good blog posts on the topic:
The biggest similarity between the two methods is that they both allow
websites to be viewed in mobile devices and various screen sizes,
ultimately providing visitors with a better mobile user experience.
Where the two methods differ is in their delivery of the
responsive/adaptive structures: RWD relying on flexible and fluid
grids, and AWD relying on predefined screen sizes. One of the main
distinctions between the two is that RWD might take more code and
implementation strategies with the fluid grids, CSS, and flexible
foundations, while AWD has a streamlined, layered approach, which
utilizes scripting to assist with adapting to various devices and
screen sizes.

Responsive functionality could be achieved a couple different ways:
You could use media queries to hide and show different segments of HTML that have different behaviors tied to them.
You can trigger your behavior with javascript where the javascript in the event handler examines the size/platform and decides what behavior to call.
You could dynamically generate different portions of HTML and their corresponding event handlers with javascript based on the size.

Mobile javascript framework with Twitter Bootstrap

In one of my website I use Twitter Bootstrap 2.3. I love its responsive behaviour, media queries in mobile devices. But it lacks of mobile features (especially linked listviews) So I need to use a framework that would handle mobile version of my website.
After some research I found that jquery mobile, sensa touch, jqtouch, iui, mobilize.js, zepto are possible candidates.
What would be your recommendation for a javascript framework/plugin for mobile pages, that would work well with twitter bootstrap ?
Possible related questions:
Bootstrap list view like jqm
twitter-bootstrap vs jquery-mobile
Using Bootstrap with jQuery Mobile

Also read this: Twitter Bootstrap Navbar: [Left Button -— Center Text -— Right Button]? II
I think i should be possible to build a mobile interface with Twitter's Bootstrap (3). And yes you're right (linked) listviews will miss. Maybe check http://getbootstrap.com/components/#list-group first. Of course you will need to write some code to handle the actions.
Other points to consider: Navigation and page structure. Frameworks like jQuery mobile serve more pages on one url, see: http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.0a2/#docs/pages/docs-navmodel.html while sencha use a MVC approach. Consider http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#tabs (or http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#scrollspy maybe) to mimic such structures.
Other examples, see: How to make a JS horizontal content slide from px to % responsive a nice interface with TB by #boblet which adopt to mobile very well now: http://bootply.com/73715. David Panzarella started a clean mobile navbar with icons: Bootstrap 3 RC2 Navbar with Multiple Collapses And a alternative mobile navigation stucture can be found here: Toggle sidebar on mobile device with Twitter Bootstrap 2.x
Good luck

If you are ready to mess up with Bootstrap and other several frameworks together then make sure you have sound knowledge in jQuery, JavaScript, CSS.
Each framework has their own way of enforcing styles etc, so if you are to combines multiple platforms together, you will often encounter issues such as the expected style from expected framework is not being applied.
I’d recommend you to stick with jQuery Mobile. jQuery Mobile 1.3 has great deal of Responsive design concepts. In the release notes itself they’ve mentioned that they are working hard to support Responsive designs. Read the official documentation provided by jQuery Mobile. This will give you a good head start.
Disclaimer : I have used only Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery Mobile. But I’ve heard from people other Mobile frameworks are not as flexible as jQuery Mobile. Also remember Sencha touch is very fast compare to jQuery Mobile but bit difficult for absolute beginners to get started.

I would recommend iUI since i'm working on it (eh eh) and because it's more or less an empty canvas you can "draw" whatever you want on.
JQuery Mobile or Sencha are nice, but they come with dozens or buttons & UI elements you might not need for a website. It's even getting a mess if you want to give a custom look to your mobile website when everything is predefined.
afaik, Zepto is only a lighter JQuery, so that wouldn't solve you linked listviews issue that much...
Please, give a try to my iUI v2 project, Emy, that you can try here:
http://www.emy-library.org/demos/
Still a few bugs to fix but i'm damn close to the initial release. Big difference compare to iUI are HTML5 syntax, custom animations, full documentation and WindowsPhone support.
http://www.emy-library.org/documentation/1.0/getting-started.html
Cheers!

Rich JavaScript DHTML menus

Can someone suggest a JS menu script that would be able to support menus such as those that are made here http://www.brightstarr.com/US/Pages/Default.aspx ?
I've been searching the web but can't quite phrase it correctly so I always end up either on Superfish or some other plain dropdown menu?
What I need is support for big menus, broken apart in sections with optional images support (image per menu link).

The particular page doesn't seem to use JS for their menu at all - just CSS leveraging the :hover pseudoclass. Found a tutorial here. The bottom line is that you write all the markup your dropdows require, season them with CSS styles to taste (and position!), and finally put the :hover in place in your stylesheet to just make the submenus appear when you want them to.

Soh Tanaka's Mega Menu is the classic example of setting up this style of menu. I'd go so far as to say it's the gold standard for mega menu scripts. After building the tutorial, it should be easy to do anything you want inside the divs for each relevant area.
The best part about using a pre-done solution with a tutorial like this is that not only do you get to learn, but it's also been well tested and revised.
If the above example is a little too strict with <li> elements, you might try this tutorial from SitePoint

I would just search for plugins for your favorite javascript framework. There are probably about 1000 if you search "jquery drop down menu plugin". The big sizes and adding of images is pretty standard in the ones I've used as well since they are just divs. I don't know if you are used to working with jquery but I am sure there are plugins for all the other big frameworks out there as well.

I wrote the menu for the BrightStarr Site. It doesn't use JS at all, I tried lots of techniques before deciding on this and I choose this for the simple reason that it performs much better on mobile devices than any other JS solution I've come across.