Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean by the "tooltip" getting longer. I am a fan of the split screen view (right click in the Gantt chart and select show split. I then click underneath the Resource Name field and start to type the resource name. Project will suggest the resource with those starting letters and I press tab to accept that name.

Regarding "condensed" - without knowing more about what resources you are using - that is difficult. The Assign Resources dialog (Resource Ribbon) does have the ability to filter the list by Resource Group - and that may help if you are able to categorize your resources by job or title.