Offline blogging tools - my feature list

Wednesday 22 November, 2006 (Blogging | Reviews)

I have realised that it is very difficult for me to write blog entries entirely on-line. Apart from my FreeTextBox problem (it won't load) which forces me to enter HTML by hand, I usually don't finish a post in one sitting so I need to save my unfinished work somewhere. Putting it up on the blog and not publishing it is obviously an option but the web interface is not optimal for working on multiple posts in parallel. So to solve my problems I have started looking into off-line blogging tools. So far I have only tried out two tools: w.bloggar and Zoundry. Neither of which really solves all of my problems although both solve parts of it. At the moment Zoundry is what I am using to post this with. I have found a couple of blogs which cover offline tools:
http://blogpraxis.de/archive/2005/05/29/what_do_i_expect_of_an_offline
http://blog.qumana.com/blog/_archives/2005/5/28/893063.html
http://www.arunn.net/scienceblog/2006/07/10/offline-blog-tools/

And I have seen a demo of Words blog support so perhaps I could use Word 2007 as my blogging tool http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/archive/2006/05/12/595963.aspx

My required features

Trackback ping management.
Autodicovery of trackback ping urls and preferably listing of potential urls for trackback from the content of my post.
Save multiple unpublished posts locally.
Create new categories and use existing categories.
Categories should not be placed inside the post but use dasBlogs category functionality.
Be able to ping Technorati and others.
Tagging support.
Upload function for images over ftp or any means that dasBlog supports.
Spell checker (preferably instant like word).
Posting preview preferably with my sites css.
HTML (xhtml) formatting support with HTML viewing so I can see what has actually happened.
Right click in post for formatting and contextual operations.
Download of existing posts for edit.
Low cost (preferably free)
Must be at least free to try or feature crippled trial but with all of the key features are available.
Must work with dasBlog!