snippets dont lose focus if you move away with the cursor

It can be good and bad. I think changing it would mean you would have to stay within the scope of the snippet and sometimes it's handy to move around before you're done. However, hitting escape will "complete" the snippet without jumping through the rest of the fields. You can always see the status of how far you are through the snippet in the status bar (eg: Field 1 of 2).

i dont see how moving 'between' tab triggers is any helpful. but good to know i can cancel it. its just very unusual that sublime handles it this way because all other editors i know do it differently.

I found it irritating when TextMate did that. Sometimes there is a valid reason to move around, like changing something that isn't in the tab trigger. I like being able to resume. Perhaps the "scope" of the snippet should be highlighted and when you click outside it cancels... But if you move around inside I'd like to be able to resume.