I noticed that when I use Safari on my PC to run my Facebook applets, the Java console gets displayed, but on the Mac, it doesn't. Is there any way to get it to appear on the Mac (OS X, 10.5 or 6)?
Java Preferences is your friend. It is located in /Applications/Utilities. You want the Advanced tab, Java Console section. The default is "Do not start console". You want to change that.