I ended up figuring out that in Eclipse, there is an IDEWorkbenchWindowAdvisor which creates a WorkbenchActionBuilder for the ActionBarAdvisor. That class creates SaveAction object which becomes a global action object. I made my ActionBarAdivsor create the action object in makeActions and it all works now. The SaveAction I was seeing before was one created for the right click save menu option on the editor. Which is why the handler is null in the "Design" page (there is no menu option to save then). So those SaveActions created for right click menus were effecting the my save CommandContributionItems enable state. When I created the SaveAction like WorkbenchActionBuilder in my ActionBarAdvisor, those right click menu SaveActions stopped effecting the main menu/toolbar items.