Welcome to the new RF Design. Obviously, we've made quite a few changes to the magazine's style and design. I'll run through a quick tour to point out all of the changes, and highlight things that have not changed.

First, the cover. Big change. Easily the biggest change. We updated the style to reflect modern design, and moved components around to give readers more information about the contents of each issue.

The most obvious change is probably the tag line. Previously, RF Design was known as the publication that covered “Engineering RF & Wireless Products….DC to Light.” The new tag line, “RF and Microwave Technology for Design Engineers,” reflects our long-standing coverage of both RF and microwave topics. While RF Design has covered both frequency ranges for years, there was an industry belief that we only covered low-frequency issue.

Another obvious change is the addition of separate graphics for the cover story and product sections. Because products drive this industry, we added space and graphics to highlight our “Product of the Month” and “Product Focus” sections. Readers can now tell at a glance what product made our monthly blue ribbon section, and what topic is covered in the product focus.

Inside the magazine, we tried to make things as simple and straight forward as possible. You will notice that the articles have few of the traditional business-to-business graphics, including color-coded sections and bright, multi-colored headers. RF Design presents practical, straightforward, tutorial-style articles to help design engineers with every day problems, and we changed our design to reflect that style.

If you've paid attention over the last nine months, you'll have noticed that we virtually eliminated our monthly news and business brief sections. We feel those timely topics are best covered on the rfdesign.com Web site. We also added a column by our tech editor, Keith Vick. This month, Keith reviews Noble Publishing's latest instructional CD series and electronic publications.

One thing that has not changed is our dedication to covering the issues that affect the wireless design industry. It may be a better package, but the content engineers have relied on for 25 years will remain. We will continue to bring you daily news, product releases and current industry events online, and practical articles and product profiles between the pages.

Look for more, although less drastic, changes to RF Design in the coming months, including an updated Web site and a new quarterly publication dedicated to defense electronics.

And as always, I welcome your magazine and industry comments and criticisms.