We are getting in more and more confusion. edit_defaults, is an optional mode defined by the spec, that a portal could support. It's just a different view of the portlet. What Julien proposed is that when you click in the admin portlet (implemented with JSF but that doesn't matter) to change the preferences instead of always showing a generic way of changing preferences, you could override that behavior by providing your own view (the edit_defaults mode). About the other part, do you really want anyone to be able to edit preferences for everybody ? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4164024#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...