Direct2D 1.1 Migration Guide for Windows 7 Developers

Update 18th February 2013: Added information about Visual Studio 2012, removed a redundant library reference from the old DirectX SDK and added the library reference needed for the Direct2D Effects Framework.

If you have developed applications targeting the original Direct2D (which we’ll call Direct2D 1.0) which comes bundled with Windows 7 and is also available on Windows Vista SP2 with Platform Update, there may come a time when you want to use features from the newer Direct2D 1.1 bundled with Windows 8. In particular, you may want to use the new Direct2D Effects API, the new multi-threaded application features or some of the new methods available in the updated bitmap or geometry interfaces.