The current layout only respects the default modes view, help and edit. If an application defined an additional mode like "config" the portal should offer a new button beside the other buttons for "edit" and "help". Some generic icons would do, or just the name of the mode. Use case: Websphere knows a mode called config that overwrites default preferences ofthe portlet.xml and is only accessible by administrators. Settings changed in config mode are default values for users in edit mode, but can be changed by users. To implement this behavior on jboss we had (among other things) to add a button in the jsp for the edit mode to get to the config mode. If jboss respected the declared mode and request.getPortletMode() returned the correct value we would not have to do that. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3982007#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...