From the change-list for the 2013-11-03 build of [Textmate][], which I only noticed on installing the 2014-01-13 build:
> The zoom animation shown when opening items can now be disabled by running this in a terminal:
defaults write com.macromates.TextMate.preview fileBrowserOpenAnimationDisabled -bool YES
[Textmate]: http://macromates.com/