There are two things I've seen regarding lists in sidebars that are relevant here
1) users tend to build hierarchy with naming when no hierarchy exists
2) the names of items will always exceed available space
That is a wordy way of saying tooltips are a very good idea, but adjustable sidebars may not help as much.
Keep in mind, I'm coming from a background in HCI work for enterprise software, where large lists and trees in sidebars are very common. This may be far less true for consumer software.
1) users tend to build hierarchy with naming when no hierarchy exists
2) the names of items will always exceed available space
That is a wordy way of saying tooltips are a very good idea, but adjustable sidebars may not help as much.
Keep in mind, I'm coming from a background in HCI work for enterprise software, where large lists and trees in sidebars are very common. This may be far less true for consumer software.
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