Even though I have the View Status Bar enabled, I no longer see the status progressing (as I once had). Is that because the page loads before the status can be displayed, or what? Or, perish the thought, can it be moi at fault?

The little blue progress bar at the bottom of the address and search bar are working just fine on my Safari 8.0, but if the page is already cached there isn't time for it to display.

The progress bars work as you describe. It's the Status Bar (View > Show Status Bar) at the bottom of the window that seems to no longer work.

Clearly, I am missing something, but what?

It has been ages since progress was shown in the status bar. I even fired up my OS X 10.4 Tiger machine, running Safari 4.1.3, and even back then Safari had already made the switch to showing progress in the location field instead.

The change in OS X 10.10 Yosemite (Safari 8.0) is that now the progress bar is a thin line at the bottom of the location field, where previously the entire background of the location field was used as a progress bar.

In time, Ganbustein, I will recover from my embarrassment (asking such a dopey question), though now I wonder just what is the benefit from having enabled the "Show Status Bar". Or, why that feature (even) exists...

Sadly, confusion in Pendragonland is not unheard of.

Still, I appreciate all the help I get at FTM.

If you hover your cursor over a link, the status bar will show the address of that link, and whether or not it will open in a new tab/window.

Thanks, Ira. Finally this boy understands.

And of course, it accommodates a space in which one may drag/move windows.

You are welcome.

To add to or enhance your options, there is a free Safari extension— Ultimate Status Bar—that gives you more options about where, how and what are displayed in the status bar.

Do you use Ultimate Status Bar, Ira, and if so, what are your thoughts?

FWIW (it's been over a year and a half), Ultimate Status Bar comes up in the thread Progress Bar Mt. Lion.

Yes, I use the extension. I like it because it gives me options as to how to display the information.

Some good info there. Perhaps there's a lesson there re those who don't search first...

And Ira, thanks for the feedback. While I am not interested in many of Ultimate's capabilities/features, I'll still give it a go. The least I can do is give it a check ride. And if it's not for me, uninstalling should be a non-issue.

Like any extension in Safari, you can enable it or not (via a checkbox) in Safari>Preferences>Extensions.