If you look at Jeremy's file progress.m you linked to, you'll see that he defined functions like ProgressTable that are able to understand the iterator specifications. This is a decent approach, and I'm now going to do something similar in writing a ShowProgress function that understands basic Table iterators and has a generic fallback.

(* ShowProgress needs to hold it's arguments, otherwise it 
   tries to show progress for something that's already 
   completely done.*)
SetAttributes[ShowProgress, HoldAll];

(* Basic table syntaxes.  Excludes {i, {i1, i2, ...}} and multi-iterator forms *)
ShowProgress[Table[e_, {i_, max_}]] := 
   ShowProgress[Table[e, {i, 1, max, 1}]]
ShowProgress[Table[e_, {i_, min_, max_}]] := 
   ShowProgress[Table[e, {i, min, max, 1}]]
ShowProgress[Table[e_, {i_, min_, max_, step_}]] := 
   Monitor[
      Table[e, {i, min, max, step}],
      Row[{ProgressIndicator[i, {min, max}], i}, " "]
      ]

(* Fall-back: shows an indeterminate progress bar and elapsed time, 
   updating a few times per second *)
ShowProgress[a_] := 
   With[{progressStartTime = AbsoluteTime[]},
      Monitor[
        a, 
        Dynamic[Refresh[
           Row[{
              ProgressIndicator[Dynamic[Clock[]], Indeterminate], 
              AbsoluteTime[] - progressStartTime
              }, " "], 
           UpdateInterval -> 0.25]]
        ]]

Here are some examples of ShowProgress in use:

I like this approach instead of the use of Progress... functions like in Jeremy's package because you don't need to change much of your code. You could hook ShowProgress in via $Pre to get automatically applied to everything. If you're willing to change code and use a special function when needed, then the Progress... functions are fine, although not too much different from ShowProgres[...].

The indeterminate progress bar with elapsed time is hopefully a little bit useful in the generic case where it can be difficult to know ahead of time how long a calculation will take. (Technically, there are times when it's unknown ahead of time whether something will finish at all.)