Welcome to sailfish !

If you are interested, you can read some of the former UI designer (Jaakko Roppola) articles on his blog, for first hand reason why things were done this way.

in the case of ambiences, this one in particular is interesting :
http://jaakkoroppola.blogspot.fr/201...ks_12.html?m=1


I personnaly follow the ideas he presented here, but you are free to prefere to add some patches if this behavior doesn't suit you.