I wish that were true. Unfortunately, many mobile sites refuse to load if they detect a browser capable of loading the companion full-size site. Sometimes, the site's owner wants to make sure that the full-size advertisements reach as many eyes as possible. Other times, there is no obvious motive.

The Italian weather service ilMeteo is an interesting case. It has a mobile site http://mobile.ilmeteo.it/ that you can visit on a full-size browser. However, once you have visited a few(*) pages, all links take you to a page of general information, including an explanation that the mobile site is intended for users connected by GPRS, UMTS, etc. (In fact, the site discriminates according to the type of browser, not the type of connection.)

You can see another few pages of http://mobile.ilmeteo.it/ if you clear the cookie that counted the previous ones. This is a bit of a pain, made worse in MicroB by the fact that you have to clear all cookies or none, when there might be some cookies that you want to leave in place.

Both MicroB and Tear are treated as desktop browsers by this site. The iPhone spoof on MicroB is treated as a mobile browser, and any number of links can be followed without clearing cookies.


(*) I used to reckon that the site allowed visits to three pages. Either I was wrong or there has been a change. This afternoon, it allowed several pages of forecasts for the same city, but redirected me to the general info page when I tried to look up a different city. No further pages could be accessed until I cleared cookies. This was true using both MicroB and Tear on N800/Diablo.