Koodi puhastus ja tagaliidese täiustused
4.1. Uuendatud GTK+ 2.10
GNOME 2.16 sõltub nüüd GTK+ 2.10 versioonist, kasutades ära paljusid täiustusi, mis on teoks saanud tänu Projekt Ridley-le; katse viia osa GNOME'i teeke GTK+ teeki.
One of the first benefits made available to GNOME users is the new printing functionality of GTK+ 2.10: It features a high level, platform-independent API, GtkPrintOperation, that also includes a new printing dialog. A low-level, UNIX-specific API is available as well that currently supports CUPS and lpr for printing.

Palju GNOME'i rakendusi porditi kasutama uut printimisfunktsionaalsust, nagu dokumendivaatur Evince, veebibrauser Ephiphany, ja abiteabe brauser Yelp.
This also marks the start of deprecating the previously used libraries libgnomeprint and libgnomeprintui: External projects are encouraged to use the new functionality provided by GTK+ 2.10.
Another important improvement introduced by GTK+ 2.10 is the new API, GtkRecent: It manages a single list of recently opened files and documents. Among the GNOME applications using the new functionality are the panel, the file manager (Nautilus), the document viewer (Evince), and the text editor (Gedit).
The file chooser dialog has also been improved: the location entry (previously opened by using Ctrl+L) has been integrated and the dialog as a whole remains responsive even when performing time-consuming file operations.

GTK+ 2.10 sisaldab endas gtk-touchscreen-mode režiimi sisaldades endas mitmeid muudatusi puutetundlike ekraanidega , mida kasutatakse laialdaselt mobiil- ja sardsüsteemides.
Several other improvements made available by GTK+ 2.10 are used throughout the desktop: New widgets to display clickable hyperlinks, or to create multi-step wizards, for example and better drag-and-drop support in notebooks allowing tabs to be reordered, moved between notebooks, and made into windows by dragging to the desktop.
4.2. GTK ja GNOME saavad sharp'i toe
GNOME 2.16 pakub nüüd GTK+ ja GNOME'i teekide siduteeke C# (C-sharp) programmeerimiskeele fännidele. See tähendab ka seda, et GNOME'i siduteegid sõltuvad Mono arendusraamistikust.
Additionally, software written in C# can be proposed as new modules for later GNOME releases. However, existing GNOME modules need to go through the proposal process again if they gain a new dependency on GTK# and/or Mono.
4.3. Uus Bug-buddy tagaliides
GNOME's bug reporting tool, Bug-buddy, now uses an XML-RPC protocol and no longer requires that the user have sendmail installed. As a result of this change, projects using Bug-buddy must have the correct information in their application's .desktop file.
The previous way to create bug reports (sendmail method) will still be supported for one year. After that, users of old Bug-Buddy versions won't be able to file bug reports anymore.
4.4. Unikood 5.0 tugi
GNOME 2.16 on esimene töölaud maailmas, mis toetab Unikoodi täheandmebaasi (UCD), versioon 5.0, mis sisaldab rohkem kui 99-tuhat tähemärki erinevate maailma keelte jaoks. Need täiustused on kogutud GNOME'i teekidesse GLib ja Pango, ja on seega kasutatavad kõikidele avatud lähtekoodiga ja vaba tarkvara projektidele, mis kasutavad neid teeke.