http://www.quirksmode.org/css/ie5win_relative.html

Not quite as fixed in IE 6.0 as that site claims. I'm guessing it's because IE6 is using a fallback mode triggered by the xml declaration, but I'll have to leave testing it for a while.

Update: see comments for testing notes.

So how to fix it, without shifting the semantic order of the html page elements? I set the h3 containing the blog item title to display: inline to stop the line break after it, then float: right on the date to shift it to the required horizontal position, and finally position: relative; top: -18px; for the vertical position. Result: http://www.phase.org/index.2004040803.php

This is quite definitely into the domain of the hack, and I suspect IE-mac might completely foul it up (I've no mac here to test on). Expect further changes.