Role-based authorization is for the portal, the page and the individual portlet instance. It is not for portlet modes. I don't think that extending an API would help - you would also need some mechanism to enable an administrator to set the permission and you would also have to change the layout managers to use the permissions to display or hide the mode icons. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4222091#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...