In reply to Keith Davis.

Hardly ignorant Keith, but a sure sign of why they've gained no ground - few beyond the world of developers are really aware of them and few beside developers have bothered to promote them. They're templates for the except view of your posts. Have a look at digwp.com for an example. They designed the format to using a chain for short posts that only need to show a link. Or at least that's as close a description as I can give since I'm not one of those developer types :)