Toillustrate this principle, an HTML page typically provides the user with a num-ber of affordances, such as to navigate to a different page by clicking a hyperlinkor to submit an order by filling out and submitting an HTML form. Performingany such action transitions the application to a new state, which provides theuser with a new set of affordances. In each state, the user’s browser retrievesan HTML representation of the current state from a server, but also a selec-tion of next possible states and the information required to construct the HTTPrequests to transition to those states. Retrieving all this information throughhypermedia allows the application to evolve without impacting the browser, andallows the browser to transition seamlessly across servers. The use of hyperme-dia and HATEOAS is central to reducing coupling among Web components, andallowed the Web to evolve into an open, world-wide, and long-lived system.In contrast to the above example, when using a non-hypermedia Web service(e.g., an implementation of CRUD operations over HTTP), developers have tohard-code into clients all the knowledge required to interact with the service.This approach is simple and intuitive for developers, but the trade-off is thatclients are then tightly coupled to the services they use (hence the need for APIversioning).