How to enable touch gesture for touch input instead of pen only like in windows 7 (touch flicks)

For the finger touch flicks, they are gone :(
Windows 8 can perform only pen flicks, and I don’t think this is going to change. The decision to remove finger touch flicks is utterly stupid and must have been made by someone who never used them on Windows 7. Since we are only a small number of users (who used the touch features on Windows 7) most Windows 8 users will not even know what they are missing.

I tried many things to solve the issue (registry edits, replacing files from Win7) and none of them worked. But I don’t give up easily, so after hours of searching online I found this free app:
http://www.strokesplus.com/files/StrokesPlus_2.3.8_x64.zip

http://www.strokesplus.com/files/StrokesPlus_2.3.8_x86.zip
Currently, the website is down returning (500 - Internal server error), but the download link is working (if not, you can use my link). This app is made for adding gestures to mouse, and it works like a charm with Win8 and touch screens. You can make and draw as much gestures as you wish, and assign the appropriate actions for them. It’s flexible, small, and extremely functional.

The downside is that gestures should be made with a mouse right-click, then draw. This requires a bit extra time waiting for the press-and-hold to activate the right click, in contrast to the Win7 fast flicks. So you better change your press-and-hold settings to the shortest time possible:
  Control Panel\Pen and Touch\Press and hold settings
And slide the “Speed” slider to the left.

However, there’s an upside to this app over the traditional flicks, that it’s not limited to only 8 flicks. You can make as much as you want adding great functionality.

After spending some time with the app, I configured it to perform similar flicks to Win7 (backward, forward, copy, paste, etc.) and added 8 more gestures (I didn't like much the preinstalled gestures). Also, more importantly, I changed the settings to suit touch screens best and to avoid interfering with the touchpad. On my laptop, the result is great.  To save you some time I uploaded my file. You just download and extract the files, and then try my customized settings. I also added instructions for making the program auto-start with Windows with administrative privileges. My file with the customized settings:
x64 version: http://sdrv.ms/Qej9wO

x86 version: http://sdrv.ms/T23Y86

Try it, and report your feedback of your experience with it.

John, I think you’re underestimating this little application. Yea the 0.5 second of waiting till the right-click is activated might seem too much, but it's still much more functional than having no gestures at all. Also the ability to make your own gestures is great.

And regarding interfering with games, I just tried it on Angry Birds and it worked flawlessly without interfering. I don’t think it would interfere with Fruit Ninja either because it’s assigned with the right mouse click.  In addition, this application is quite sophisticated and has advanced settings in which you can make it ignore gestures in certain programs, or perform specific gestures in others. Even if it interfered, it can simply and quickly be deactivated and reactivated by a single click on its icon in the notification area. In short, you just need to spend some time at first to customize it and get used it, then it’s almost as good as the traditional flicks. It’s portable and requires no installation, it’s only 1.5mb, and it’s self-contained and doesn’t add any keys to your registry… so just give it a try before you announce the verdict :)

You’re welcome Alex :)
Regarding “backward” and “forward” in Windows explorer… if you had downloaded my customized version you would have had them ready, that’s what I meant by saving you some time :)
Anyway, you can copy the Lua script for the action from “Chrome” and it’s:
acSendKeys("{DELAY=50}{BROWSERFORWARD}")
and
acSendKeys("{DELAY=50}{BROWSERBACK}")

I recommend you to make the following changes to your settings:
>> Cancel Delay: 77ms

>> Stroke Style
Red: 79
Green: 129
Blue: 182
Width: 35px
Min. Segment Length: 6px
Length: 22points
Opacity: 100

>> Advanced Options
Check: Release/Reinitialize on Suspend/Resume
Check: Reset Cancel Delay on Movment
Uncheck: Keep Gesture Draw Windows On Top
Uncheck: Don’t hide Gesture Draw Windows

That’s what worked best for me… in addition to disabling the preinstalled gestures and making new ones more similar to Win7 flicks… by the way, the website is back on, and you can access it and check its forum.