I'm using the portlet container release available http://www.jboss.org/portletcontainer/download/index.html to get my feet wet developing portlets. The simple-portal app uses JSP tag libraries to render the portlets. Specifically, there is a portlet.tag file that does the rendering of portlets and their controls. In this tag, the "edit" mode button is always rendered - regardless of whether the portlet supports that view. Also, this tag does not render a "help" button.

How can I detect the modes that a portlet supports in this context? It seems like there ought to be a portlet object lying around that I could query for a list of modes in some way.

Thanks.

- Jasen.