I am finding some differing information/opinions on this so I figured I'd see what the members of this board think:

If you are going to start learning DirectX from scratch, would you suggest getting the latest version of the DirectX and learn/work through it? Or would you suggest finding a good reference and starting at the version of DirectX that is used by the reference?

Is DirectX generally "forwards-compatible" in that a DirectX 9 application developed in/for Windows XP should run on a Windows 7 machine?

Is it generally a significant issue to update an DirectX 9 application to DirectX 11?

Guillaume

I would say get the latest version and use it!
Under windows 7, I have recompiled few programs that uses old version of directX and runs in general Ok.