I think I have run into a bug in Mojarra 2.1.0. Maybe I missed something but damned if I can see it.
I rely a lot of @ViewScoped beans to save state whilst the brows
This is a known "bug": issue 1665. It's a chicken-egg issue with regard to partial state saving.
In your case, however, you could also just use .
Your best bet is to try to avoid JSTL tags when using @ViewScoped. The only alternative is to disable partial state saving by a context param in web.xml:
javax.faces.PARTIAL_STATE_SAVING
false
But it makes the views more memory hogging.