Exponential Notation for CSS Property Values

The other day I opened up some SVG files in my text editor to change their color values and I came across a rather strange looking value for opacity.

<style>.svgitem { opacity:3.500000e-02; } </style>

It turns out that this is called “Exponentional Notation” and actually does what you wanted it to do in the first place. ;) If I'm not mistaken, those files have been saved with Adobe Illustrator.

Here's how it works: The E tells you how many places to move the decimal point. A negative number after E says to move the decimal point to the left. A positive number tells you to move the decimal point to the right.

To sum things up: opacity: 3.500000e-02 is exactly the same as opacity: 0.035;. I have to say that I find the latter notation much easier to read, much easier to write and easier to understand. That's probably why we don't use this on a regular basis ;)

I'm not sure why it would appear like this in those files, maybe someone can shed a light on it someday.