You are correct, and I misunderstood what the article was saying. I just skimmed the paper itself.
I thought it was saying that spiders were simply adjusting the material properties of their glue in response to environmental conditions. This is not evolution.
The paper is saying that while the glue genes themselves are largely conserved, the material properties can vary by altering the ratios of protein which are expressed.
Presumably this ratio is controlled due to other faster evolving genes (although this is not proven by the paper as far as I can see). I'm not entirely sure if they ruled out whether spiders could in fact adjust their glue in response to changing environmental conditions.