These provide a shorter way to link to files (in BBCode at least, the HTML has some extra attributes to keep it compliant) and a much better presentation on whatever site you're linking files on.
In addition, the HTML can be used to float the info now, rather than just giving a link that gets lost in huge blocks of text such as this one. If anyone wants to make a better background image (available here) feel free to let me know.
www.xerol.org