The tutorial provides a guide on creating a real-time progress bar using PubNub to stream status updates, showcasing a practical application beyond static JavaScript progress bars by integrating dynamic updates for uses like IoT sensor data, chatroom capacity, or file uploads. It includes the use of a Node.js script to simulate file upload progress, sending percentage data to a 'progress-bar' channel every five seconds, and a simple HTML template with jQuery and PubNub CDNs to visualize the progress. The JavaScript is primarily responsible for the animation of a circular progress bar, subscribing to the PubNub channel to receive and render progress updates, highlighting the potential of real-time updates in web applications.