Img's max-height not respecting parent's dimensions

I figured it out. For an element's max-height to work, one of its parents must have a height attribute defined (apparently in a fixed unit, like px, not in percentage).

From the w3c specs:

The percentage is calculated with respect to the height of the generated box's containing block. If the height of the containing block is not specified explicitly (i.e., it depends on content height), and this element is not absolutely positioned, the percentage value is treated as '0' (for 'min-height') or 'none' (for 'max-height').

Since none of my img's parent have a fixed height defined, I had to limit my img to max-width instead.

Edit: Also, it seems webkit takes the specs a little too literally: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3808701/857807

I used the workaround presented in that thread, and used position: absolute; max-height: 100%; top: 0.

I bumped into this as well and I managed to get a consistent height across different browsers using vh units in CSS, for example max-height: 5vh; as in 5% of the viewport height.