No, that's not correct, at least in my experience. "Request desktop site" usually means "reload the same page, but send a User Agent string so the server thinks

No, that's not correct, at least in my experience. "Request desktop site" usually means "reload the same page, but send a User Agent string so the server thinks I'm calling from a full desktop browser". This works for websites where the server does some UA string sniffing and sends different html+assets for different types of devices. The same works in reverse. In Chrome Dev Tools I can set the UA to iPhone/iPad/Android (http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6 http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6) and I should expect to see a mobile version of the site. Of course, with Responsive this does not work since responsive looks at screen size, not UA string. For example, try changing your UA string in Chrome to iOS 6 and visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/