The playlist feature is much faster and usable now. THANK YOU! But the scrolling timeline is still invisible after the first song plays. Somehow the playlist steals the attention and the scrolling line disappears unless you highlight the song. Maybe next time???

Try clicking the 'PIN' at the top right of the playlist.  When pinned it means to keep focus on the Playlist, when un-pinned the focus will go to the playing project.  Now that the Playlist is a floating  window it will always remain on top, unless minimized.
 

Thanks Jamie for the reply. I was so excited to try your suggestion, thinking that things worked differently now. But . . . the only difference when pinned is that the "N" key works when you want to jump to the "next" song. And doesn't when it isn't pinned. If you load three or more songs you'll notice that the scrolling timeline works only on the first and last songs on the list, with, or without it being pinned. I did come up with an idea that could be an easy fix for the next version. (now I'm not a programmer) but if in the coding at the very end of the (play next song, or spacebar)command you put a "Ctrl+Tab," it would throw the attention back to the playing song and all would work like it used to before "Dorchester"

Bummer.  I see the current now time marching line on all computers (both home and at work) regardless of the Pinned setting -- that was more of an answer to your initial comment of "Somehow the playlist steals the attention". This is with both small and large playlists (typically more than three). There must be another reason why it's not showing up for you.  
 
Does the screen still scroll horizontally when the 'invisible' now time reaches the scroll point? I'll keep an eye out for it, but we'll need to reproduce it in order to 'fix' it.
 
 

Thanks Jamie for looking at this. I've had no scrolling timeline on at least 3 different computers. The fact that it is appearing on all of your computers gives me hope. I would be delighted to find out that it's something on my end. As for your questions, the screen does scroll horizontally, but there's no timeline. Basically everything works except the timeline.
With the songs set to 'wait for keypress'. First song plays perfectly with timeline moving along to the end of the song. Second song when I hit the spacebar, I momentarily see the third song WITH a scrolling timeline, then it switches back to the second song with no visible scrolling timeline and plays to the end invisible. Same behavior for each consecutive song through the second to last song. The last song plays perfectly WITH a timeline.
 
Aside from this annoyance, the playlist has been working well. I've even used it in a live situation running critical cues since this last release. My tech guy loved how snappy it was, although he freaked out a couple of times without the familiar timeline (thinking it crashed) and then remembered.

Pulled forum duty eh?

OK, I tried experimenting to find out if it was on my end. My suspicions were the fact that I've been using my own templates that were probably created originally in MUCH older versions of Sonar. So I decided to make a playlist from one of the current stock templates and sure enough, everything worked properly. My next trick is to try to find out what element in my personal template is causing the disappearing timeline. Wish me luck!