I hear you about the using of dates to find posts and the factoring of post frequency in subscribing. There will almost always be sacrifices that come with less info, but we gain a little less eye clutter, which I think is worth it for now.

I think being able to see the date of a post is helpful. Sometimes when I’m looking for something on a high-frequency blog, I lock in on the style of that date flag and quickly flip through the first few archive pages to get to what I want. This can be faster than word searching, if what you happen to remember about the post is when you saw it.

The dates also let a new visitor quickly get an idea of how recently the blog has been updated, and how frequently it gets updated. These things both factor into my decisions about whether to add something to my feed reader.

I like the gray, but would love to see a white background for the content column in a future iteration of the site’s theme. Contrast is good for readability, and images with white backgrounds would blend right in.