I prefer faded comments, because some of my code is quite heavily commented. The code itself is what I always read, and I want it to jump out at me. The comments are background info, observations, sometimes wordy descriptions of why things are the way they are, and so on. If I've been away from the code for a while, I'll read the comments to help reestablish the context, refresh my memory of failed experiments, of shortcuts, optimizations, and so on. Most of the time, I don't need to read these comments, so having them faded into the background works for me in every way except for the briefer, more urgent type of comment that SHOULD jump out.

One thing I would like to have is an editor that responded to tags within comments (so it wouldn't be a part of the programming lang syntax, but just a convention used by the programmer) which would apply different colors to different types of comments. I would then use a faded color for wordy background info or comments needed by anyone proposing to change the code but not needed for reading the code, brighter colors for brief comments on the intent of a chunk of code (making the code easier to skim) and maybe a very bright color for WARNING, or FIXME, or STUB-ONLY, or TODO, etc.