Suggestion bellow is a fix for a possible NPE issue in our code located in org.icefaces.impl.context.DOMPartialViewContext.applyBrowserChanges(Map parameters, Document document), around lines 470-480:

// if we cannot loop through optionElements, we must have
// just a text node
if (0 == optionElementsLength) {
Node optionBodyNode = selectElement.getFirstChild();
// QUICK BUGFIX oboede 2012-06-04: In case of f:ajax updates this node value
// was sometimes <code>null</code>.
if (optionBodyNode != null) { <--------- (1) to avoid NPE at (2)
String optionBody = optionBodyNode.getNodeValue(); <--------------- (2)

// Should be constant, but may vary with JSF implementation
String SELECTED = "selected=\"true\"";
Matcher tagMatcher = OPTION_TAG.matcher(optionBody);
StringBuffer outBuffer = new StringBuffer();
while (tagMatcher.find()) {
String optionTag = tagMatcher.group(0);
Matcher valueMatcher = OPTION_VALUE.matcher(optionTag);
Matcher selectedMatcher = OPTION_SELECTED.matcher(optionTag);
String valuePair = null;
String value = null;
String selected = null;
if (valueMatcher.find()) {
valuePair = valueMatcher.group(0);
value = valueMatcher.group(1);
}
if (selectedMatcher.find()) {
selected = selectedMatcher.group(1);
SELECTED = selected;
}

if (values.contains(value)) {
if (null == selected) {
optionTag = optionTag.replace(valuePair, valuePair + " " + SELECTED);
}
} else {
if (null != selected) {
optionTag = optionTag.replace(" " + selected, "");
}
}
tagMatcher.appendReplacement(outBuffer, optionTag);
}
tagMatcher.appendTail(outBuffer);
optionBodyNode.setNodeValue(outBuffer.toString());
}
}