There is so much more to Vermeer's art than just clever use of tools. I like this article much better (it got completely ignored on HN):
That's an article about Vermeer and his art.
This is an article about the technical aspects of his painting.
They're different topics and it's not really surprising to see this one generating more interest; but yes, indeed. There's a lot more to his work than simply the technical means by which he produced them; that's true of any artist (composition, etc).
Also, that site has a really horrid and hard to read layout. The densely packed sans-serif font blocks that academic sites seem to favor are terrible. It's ironic given the attention that typesetting gets for academic papers seemed to get completely ignored once the web comes into it. -__-