Hey Andy,
a few things I’ve found that make mine hang up: computer is downloading update, wife is streaming video while I’m trying to upload my design, my browser needed to be updated, too many tabs open. It usual should only take a minute or two to upload your design and get a time estimate (unless you have multiple layers with greys, those take a long time). if it takes any longer than a minute or two for a fairly simple design, something is wrong and it’s usually on the users end more often than on the Glowforge end.
if you opened up a new tab while it was hung up on the other browser, you might just want to turn the machine off and back on to let it start over so that it’s all synced up.
Yes the startup calibration is independent of the browser. I generally turn on the machine, let it run through the initial calibration, then open the browser window.
I realize it’s late, but the first time can take up to 15 minutes or so if there are a couple of updates to run through. Normally it only takes two or three minutes on startup.
I have a design that takes about an hour to render. Also make sure the GFUI highlights the entire design first. I jumped the gun and it only cut what was highlighted. It took 15 minutes to highlight every element. The design i was cutting was a living hinge pattern.
I never do that and never had an issue that wasn’t explained some other way (source file). Is this a repeatable problem for you? If so, it would be a good thing to report.
Although I never wait for more than a few minutes for a job to render. An hour would never cross my mind as remotely reasonable.