Under certain situations, a redeploy of a portlet can cause the following:

 Aug 7, 2008 4:22:46 PM com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl phase
WARNING: executePhase(RENDER_RESPONSE 6,com.icesoft.faces.context.BridgeFacesContext@d2142e) threw exception
java.lang.ClassCastException: com.icesoft.faces.context.ElementController
at com.icesoft.faces.context.ElementController.from(ElementController.java:22)
at com.icesoft.faces.context.DOMResponseWriter.enhanceBody(DOMResponseWriter.java:331)
at com.icesoft.faces.context.DOMResponseWriter.enhanceAndFixDocument(DOMResponseWriter.java:276)
...

The problem cannot currently be replicated with our demo portlets but there is a sample portlet included in the forum entry that does show the issue.

After some discussion, it's likely that the ElementController mechanism is no longer needed as it was an interim solution for focus management. So we should remove this logic and retest with the user's sample application