For most people, this is a great way to understand the possibilities for different UIs to test. Instead of just copying others, you can think more abstractly about the UI ideas.
It's the fact that if you have a website dedicated to good user interface, and you want to be known as an authority on good user interfaces, and the site on which you intend to launch or grow this authority has a completely FUBARed user interface... I think it's fair to point that out.
Orange text on dark background? Whatever, it's perfectly readable unless you have poor eyesight. Footer taking up a full third of the page with no quickly discernable way to close it? Definite problem and cause for concern regarding your purported authority on that very issue.
Good ideas often seem bad. You can't know until you've tried it and measured it. At least he's trying it.
I'm sure he gets a great sign-up rate from that highly-visible form, but if readers are irritated by it, what negative impact is it having for him?
Focusing on metrics and simple minute behaviours while disregarding the big picture lead to evil user interfaces.
That is a good question. Assuming there is some goal beyond signups (retention?), then if you cannot or are not measuring it, then that is the biggest problem.
No one says you don't have to be smart in picking the metrics you measure.
Whether that's ultimately a good UI choice I can't really say. Is not being able to find a close button quickly enough so alienating an experience that it would cause many users to turn away or never come back?
Only after this did I realise that one must pay attention to smaller screens too while thinking of UI design. (I am just a developer and almost never did any UI design I must admit - but it was an observation that seemed interesting to me).
Likewise, in this article, the giant footer takes up half my tablet's page, yet the author does this because it contains his call to action.
It is completely fair to point out the irony of an article about good UI design residing on a site with questionable UI design. And while many of the points made were common sense or already known to me, I did learn and/or refresh a bit and so personally appreciated the article.
Still, it would be good to get more insight about the far trickier question: how to engage and compel users to your call to action without having to resort to offending them with popups, giant footers, etc.
The call to action has to be non-intrusive. And that's probably going to depend on the type of call to action, though I think that if he had left the footer as it was intended to do (the offer comes after the article is done, once you read the whole thing and you're sold, as is the traditional approach that you know, sells) it would have worked much better.
It's hard to read through a slot, and who wants to do that?
So a marketing page needs to be easy to read and give the call to action at the end.
The one upvote button just means that people agree, not that they think it's an important, insightful comment, and that's why we see those comments float to the top.
As the OP, in this case and others, I wouldn't too much into those comments, because I too know how skull-numbingly hairsplitting and pedantic comments here can be - or seem.
Also, to "shit on details big or small" is, in other words, to provide (somewhat constructive) feedback, which helps both the site author (if he/she reads it) and us here learn and grow. This is the whole point of HN.